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IMPROVISATION 

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ELECTRONIC 

DRONES 

NOISE 

LOUD 

WEIRD 

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The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


CREDITS 

ED PINSENT - Editor, 
Writer and Publisher; also 
typography, design, collages 
and drawings 

Contributors 

WAR ARROW 
RICHARD REES JONES 
RIK RAWLING 
CHRIS ATTON 
DISINFORMATION 
ANDY MARTIN 
IAN MIDDLETON 


IMAGES 

Ian Middleton; pp 3, 16, 34, 44, 56 

Rik Rawling: pp 5, 26, 40, 68, 88, 90, 109 

Ed Pinsent: pp 6, 14, 15, 46, 54, 57, 63, 80, 91, 1 1 1 

Disinformation; p 63 

War Arrow: p 1 20 

People Like Us: pp 18, 19, 20, 22 

Nigel Ayers: pp 49, 51, 52 

The cover is a pastiche of Der Dada first issue, Berlin June 1919, 
edited by Raoul Hausmann. 

4* 4*4* 4* 4*4* 4* 4* 4* 4»j+4*4#4 

Entire Contents are © Copyright 2000 by their respective creators 

HOW TO GET RECORDS 

We have tried to supply contact address, e-mail and website for as 
many records this issue as possible. Feel free to write for further 
advice. Records on the STAALPLAAT and SOLEILMOON labels are 
distributed in the UK by THESE RECORDS. Further addresses below. 

ADDRESS LIST 

ACTA, 28 Aylmer Road, London W 1 2 9LQ 

ALGA MARGHEN, do Emanuele Carcano, via Frapoli 40, 20133, 
Milan, Italy 

ANOMALOUS RECORDS, PO Box 22195, Seattle, WA 98122-0195, 
USA 

BETLEY WELCOMES Careful Drivers, 7 Woodside, Madeley, Crewe, 
CHESHIRE CW3 9HA 

CAPTAIN TRIP RECORDS, 3-17-14 Minami-Koiwa, Edogawa-Ku, 
Tokyo, JAPAN 

DIRTER PROMOTIONS, PO Box 61, Herne Bay , Kent CT6 8GA 
DISCUS, PO Box 658, Sheffield, S 10 3YR 
ELICA, Via Arduino 97, 10015 Ivrea TO, Italy 
EMANEM RECORDS, 3 Bittacy Rise, London NW7 2HH 

EMPREINTES DIGITALES, 4580 Avenue de Lorimier, Montreal, 
Quebec H2H 2B5, Canada 

EREMITE, PO Box 812, Northampton, MA 01 06 1, USA 
FIREWORK EDITION RECORDS - distributed in the UK by TOUCH 
FISHEYE, PO Box 1 10, Farnborough, Hampshire GUI 4 6YT 

FOURTH DIMENSION RECORDS, PO Box 63, Herne Bay, Kent CT6 
6YU 

INCUS RECORDS, 14 Downs Road, London E5 8DS 
LOWLANDS Distribution, Hoomstraat 6, 2000 Antwerpen, Belgium 
OCHRE RECORDS, PO Box 155, Cheltenham, Gloucester GL5I 0YS 
PLATE LUNCH, PO Box 1 503, 53585 Bad Honnef, Germany 
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RER MEGACORP, 79 Beulah Road, Thornton Heath, SURREY CR7 
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Frankfurt am Main, Germany 

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97283, USA 

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Amsterdam, Netherlands 

THESE RECORDS, I 12 Brook Drive, London 
SEI I 4TQ 

TOUCH, 13 Osward Road, London SWI7 7SS 

XI RECORDS, PO Box 1754, Canal Street 
Station, New York, NY 10013, USA 


Editorial Address: 
THE SOUND 
PROJECTOR, BM INDEFINITE, 
LONDON WC1N 3XX, UNITED 
KINGDOM 

www.supergraphics.demon.co. 

uk/soundprojector 

BACK ISSUES AVAILABLE AT 
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IMAGINATION @£2 

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£3 

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Number Six THE BLACK AND THE RED @ £4 

Please add 50p postage per copy in the UK, £ I per copy overseas. 

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Special thanks this issue: 

CARL GLOVER for Photoshop assist 
HARLEY RICHARDSON - keeper of the website 
ED BAXTER - introductions and connections 

♦*♦♦♦ ♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦ ♦♦♦♦♦♦ 4# ♦♦ 4# 

PLEASE NOTE: The Sound Projector is happy to receive: 

Sample CDs and sample tapes 
Submissions from writers 

& Picture contributions from cartoonists or illustrators 
% Feedback from readers 
% Support from advertisers 
^ Constructive suggestions of any kind 



l 




The Sound Projector Se7enth 
Issue April 2000 

Table of Contents 


COMPACT DISC, RECORD 
AND TAPE REVIEWS 


INTERVIEWS 


FANCIFUL SECTION TITLE 

Actual contents 


IN THE ART GALLERY 

ontemporary composers; sound 
installation music 


HE CRACKLING ETHER 

Electronic music 


RNING INTO A MICROCHIP 

Computer Music 


NVIRONMENTAL AND FIELD 
RECORDINGS 

Change your surroundings 


CUT & PASTE 

Plunderphonics galore 


RY SPECIAL NOTHING MUSIC 

Ultra-Minimalism 


OSTRUMS, STRATAGEMS, 
GIDGETS AND GADGETS 

matter of scale 


ODERN PSYCHEDELIA 

Born-again psychmerchants 


MUSIC FROM JAPAN 

Noisy Japan underground music 


HE DRONING ONES 

onotonous droney music 


THE UTTER FREAKDOM 

Remarkably outlandish records 


E PHANTOM OF LIBERTY 

Improvised music 


HE DISCURATOR'S DEN 

)ther Record reviews 


ATOMS OF PURE NOISE 

Non-musical ear-splitting racket 

MONOLITHIC INVOCATIONS OF 
IXISTENTIAL DISCOMFORT 

'he Lemons Received in Oranges 


SKIPLOAD OF TAPES 

Cassette releases 


MOMENTS OF STIMULATION 

'unes and songs 


MEPHISTO-BEATS! 

Rhythms and Breaks 


RADICAL MECHANICS 

Raucous guitar bands 


E HER CORNER 

hris Cutler recommends 


TAPE MASCHINES MAKEN 

Interesting noises on magnetic tape 


SOUNDBOMBING 

Rap and hip-hop 


Total items Page 
reviewed 










POPULAR CULTURE, SEX, 
RELIGION 

People Like Us 

THIS IS THE BIG SOUND OF 
•nocturnal EMISSIONS 

Nigel Ayers 


E JAPANESE DO IT WITH 
ORE KINDNESS 

tomo Yoshihide 


PROPOSES, GOD DISPOSES 

Van Dyke Parks 



ARTICLES 


UNKNOWING THE 
PROGRESSIVE 

By Chris Atton 


ODSPEED YOU BLACK 
EMPEROR! LIVE 

By Rik Rawling 



THE NEGATIVES OF LIGHTNING 

By Disinformation 


Selected ARTWORK 


GORICAL PORTRAIT OF 
ROGER BACON 

By Disinformation 


BIG PUN COMIC STRIP 

By War Arrow 


CAPTAIN BEEFHEART 

By Ed Pinsent 


SPACEMAN 

By Rik Rawling 



ADVERTISING 


HESE RECORDS 


ARDRUM 



LSIE AND JACK RECORDINGS 


ELEKTION 


SHEYE DISTRIBUTION 


ATADOR RECORDS 


The Sound Projector Se7enth 
Issue April 2000 

Table of Contents 


8 

17 


2 






































































The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


ATWMS of PURE N-O-l-S-l 

E 

All vibrations to the ear iiiiiiiiiuiiuiiiiiiihhiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii 

A 


function as molecular disruption. [i!(iiiiittiii!i!ii!iiiii!iiiiiiuiiNi 



iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii This disruption is caused 



by Atoms of Pure Noise. iiiiiiiiiiiiiH 

llll!!lllll!!l!l!!l!!!«l!lllllll]»ll!l!!l!!!!!!lll 




Ceramic Hobs 

Psychiatric Underground 

PUMF RECORDS PUMF 332 / 

MENTAL GURU MG 002 CD (1999) 

The letter says 'please feel free to give our 
CD a good slagging', therefore legitimising an 
act that I felt was inevitable as soon as I saw 
the name PUMF Records. For as long as I can 
remember, since the day I sent off for my first 
fanzine, it seemed like everything that came 
through the letterbox contained a flyer 
pertaining to something by Stan Batcow of 
PUMF. Sure, let's network...but there's no 
need to go stark raving mad. I swear, at one 
point, even the lecky bill came with a little 
photocopy suggesting I send off for Stan's 
latest opus. Once I actually came across one 
of these obsessively publicised items of 
Stanbilia, and the kindest thing I can say is that 
it wasn't really up my street. In recent years I 
have had conversations with at least two 
people who said they too were 
once plagued by the dreaded 
PUMF flyers, so it WASN'T just 
me! There's probably a discarded 
PUMF flyer flapping around in the 
solar winds rolling across the 
surface of the moon. If the 
S.E.T.I. folks ever finally get that 
signal from somewhere else on 
the depths of the galaxy, I'll bet 
the first sentence is a request for 
a cessation in the tide of flyers 
advertising PUMF stuff. 

Well, that's that off my chest. 

The second name I recognised 
from this was that of the band. I 
distantly remember hearing 
something by them on a tape 
from way back, and enjoying it! 

Guitarry sort of feller as I 
remember. Lots of fuzz. Messy 
but likeable. PUMF and Ceramic 
Hobs, eh! So there's a link. This 
should be interesting. 

It's certainly one of the more 
incoherent CDs I've come 
across. Tape collages are 
splattered across its 28 tracks 
with all the ferocity of the 
pattern in the toilet bowl after a 
bout of swallie induced 
pebble-dashery. All mashed up 
with the tapes and a few techno 
inspired remixes is an assortment 
of occasionally tuneful punky 
numbers complete with gargled 


vocals, a drumkit being demolished, and a 
family of chimps at the mixing desk. They 
must've got through some PG Tips whilst this 
album was being made. Psychiatric 
Underground is like one of those kid's 
drawings of a circus where everything 
happens simultaneously, an interpretation 
which, if true to life, would mean that most 
circuses would last about five minutes. 

As you might guess, some of Psychiatric 
Underground is hard work but as a whole, it 
kind of does the business, even if technically 
speaking, it shouldn't. The sheer chaos 
described above, which by the way isn't 
written as criticism, is kind of appealing. As 
far as guitar and drums punk rock goes I'd 
listen to this anyday over all that 
NME-sponsored crap. There’s things going on 
here, imagination is being used, and the Hobs 
are feeding your expectations into the 
mincer, even if their trousers keep falling 
down while they're doing it. It's never going 
to be my favourite album of all time but it 


isn’t without a place in the universe. The 
simple fact that Ceramic Hobs have managed 
to bypass my perhaps unfair prejudice 
regarding the noble Stan's flyers must count 
for something, and besides, an album sporting 
track titles like 'Mr Vicar Fills His Head With 
Rock' and 'Parrot Night for Captain Morgan' 
has got to justify at least a raised eyebrow. 
Sorry for my initial scepticism, chaps. Yer 
CD's all right. 

WAR ARROW 

25 Ivy Avenue, Blackpool, Lancs FY4 3QF 

Kent Tankred 

A Revelation 

SWEDEN, FIREWORK EDITION 
RECORDS FER 1006 CD (1999) 

Pretty effective hour-long blast of noisy 
concoctions from your man Tankred, and as 
the title indicates it's laced with a Biblical 
theme. Ignore the fragment of 'Bible Code' 
nonsense printed in the inner sleeve, 
and use this 'extremely loud' music as 
the soundtrack to the impending 
Millennial doom. The Book of 
Revelation of St John the Divine has 
provided artists with a rich source of 
inspirational material since, well ever 
since people could draw I suppose. If 
you look at the woodcuts by Jean 
Duvet (b. 1485) from one of his 
famous book of engravings, The 
Apocalypse , you see this gaseous 
angel figure, striding along on land 
and sea with columns of fire for legs, 
moving towards St John with grim 
determination, in order to force-feed 
him The Book. Despite the reassuring 
theme of spiritual nourishment, it's a 
terrifying image - but as the 
commentary to the book The 
Waking Dream (Thames and Hudson 
1975) indicates, all the fantastic 
elements are already there written in 
the Bible text - all the artist had to do 
was illustrate them. 

Kent Tankred manages something of 
the required terror-levels in this 
blasting opus, and although the 
pompous 'A Revelation' track (30 
pointless minutes of sequenced drum 
banging) bores me rigid, the massive 
'From Alpha to Omega and Back 
Again' does the job with a merciless 
grinding belt-sander to the brain. A 
dense concatenation of noises - I 



3 




The Sound 


have to call them 'non-specific' noises for 
some reason, because so removed from 
original source material and extremely hard 
to pinpoint as to where they're happening in 
the stereo picture. A thrilling uncertainty - as 
nebulous as the gaseous angel. Such 
disorientation of course only adds to the 
excitement. 'Desert' is pretty good too, an 
enlarged widescreen psycho-drama picture of 
spiritual nothingness suggested only by 
treated environmental recordings, faintly 
skipping scratchy vinyl, and a nagging sense of 
emptiness continually pounding away in the 
empty, purplish sky of sound. A fine effort 
from this Stockholm-born sound artist, 
realised with money from the Swedish 
Government it seems. 

ED PINSENT 


Projector SE7ENTH 

Masonna 

Spectrum Ripper 

COLD SPRING CSR17CD CD (1998) 

MADEMOISELLE 

ANNE 

SANGLANTE 

OU 

NOTRE 

NYMPHOMANIE 

AUREOLE 

A cacophony in 25 parts, Spectrum Ripper 
sees our boy moving further into territory 
previously charted by fellow Japanese 'noise' 
musician Masami Akita. As with Merzbow's 


issue 2000 


; 'f v 


-A 


A.M.B. 

96 11 16 

JAPAN, UNITED 
SYNDICATE USDR-01 CDR 
(LTD 50 COPIES) 

Engraved on this handpainted 
artefact be my most favoured 
sumptuous noisefest to have 
come my way last year. Little is 
known about the mysterious 
A.M.B. except he/she/it lives in 
Tokyo and released this 
gorgeous handmade CD-R 
through the label and good 
graces of Kato Hideki, the man 
behind Bass Army. A.M.B.'s 
brand of noise may not be as 
extreme or exhilarating as 
some listeners would prefer 
(especially when weighed 
against the Merzbow periodic 
table, for example) but in the 
right mood this brand of 
deep-space asteroid 
blasto-music could be just what 
you're looking for. The 
dynamics are superb, evidence of a masterful 
noise-maker in control of his magnetic 
compass as he steers his raft over the Seven 
Seas of Cacophony. Like a spaceship pilot 
about to be drawn into a black hole, the 
second A.M.B. senses that chaos is about to 
take over, he pulls back on the joystick and 
eases up on the thruster rockets. The 
passenger / listener (that's you) enjoys that 
sudden thrill as the components of the 
swirling sound-aura suddenly focus into 
distinct areas; how can that insignificant 
blipping prevail over that harsh, buzzing 
feedback all of a sudden? It's all here, along 
with up-close amplifier hum, wonky analogue 
electronics, and a lovely contiguous pattern 
to the structure that makes it a must-play 
from start to finish. All three parts, down in 
one. Drink deep from this draught, ye 
knowers of the knarly knoise! 

(That's if you can find a copy, of course...was 
available from BWCD at time of writing, but 
due to extreme limitation of the edition, 
probably not any more.) 

ED PINSENT 

V V V V V V 


A.M.B. 

96 11 16 




V- 


’ ' y >\ " vW V - - 

• >- -T 

v > ' : i 


> >, r /./C 






own 1930 what we have here is some leaning 
towards 'structure' with noticeable rises and 
falls, near silent pauses and an almost 
'organised' rush of high frequency distortion 
and screaming feedback. Masonna has not 
necessarily tamed the whirlwind but he’s now 
channelling it in directions of his choosing, 
stopping along the way to consider his next 
move. The pauses amidst the thunder are like 
sound effects from a Gerry Anderson series 
which certainly brings a smirk to the 
proceedings. The cover art of shadows, 
stained torsos and ancient blades sets a dark 
tone initially but it's difficult not to smile with 
Masonna as he prises open the bars of the 
zoo cage of consensus reality and unleashes 
his lupine howl, compressing it through every 
conceivable gadget available. Loops of his 
distorted rants and snarls sound like the 
souped up riffs of contemporary rock bands 
who've ieapt on that eiectronica bandwagon. 
Elsewhere there’s shades of Pussy Galore a la 
'Spit n Shit' and Atari Teenage Riot at their 
most disorganised - so it's 
'punktechnoiselectronics' - well, maybe it is 
to those who need their neat compartments. 

As usual, with tracks titled 'Part IV, Part V' 
and so on, it's difficult to raise any hook upon 
which to hang Masonna's aesthetic intent. At 
least Merzbow drops a few clues with his 
titles but this guy seems determined to leave 
us confused and adrift on a sea of possible 


interpretations: World War 4, the Silver 
Surfer vs Galactus, Leatherface's diary read 
out loud by a Tourettes-addled robot, the 
soundtrack to a porn movie starring Giger's 
Alien, a T-1000 Terminator and Traci Lords 
in a 3-way gang bang that reaches its acid 
spewing orgasmic crescendo as Nemesis the 
Death Comet hits Ground Zero. Louder, 
faster and crazier than anything else Masonna 
transcends all attempts at explanation or 
definition. With Spectrum Ripper and its 
suggestions of 'structure' he has moved an 
inch closer to the still light-years-away Top of 
the Pops appearance. Let's see the 
ever-vacant Gail Porter announce that one 
with the same glib smile she usually reserves 
for the likes of Westlife! And let's see the 
look on her face after he's done his thing - 

shambling off the stage, nothing but 
destruction in his wake, B*Witched 
quivering in the corner and 
whimpering for 'Mother'. 
Redemption, Revelation, Violation; 
Masonna. 

^ I RIK RAWLING 20/12/1999 

Cold Spring, 87 Gloucester 
Avenue, Delap re, Northampton 
NN4 9PT 

e-mail: coldsprlng@thenet. co. uk 
www. the net. co. uk/~coldspring 

Dachise 
; /■ J Twin Braids 

ASSEMBLAGE POINT 
ASPQ001CD (1999) 

More cranky Dada noise, and an 
album which was originally available 
on cassette, although in terms of 
sound quality obviously an 
extremely well-recorded one. Your 
friend and mine, Mr Hideously 
Distorted Noise And Feedback 
makes a number of guest 
appearances amid patches of 
silence, scratchy records of choirs, 
and aggravatingly looped samples, all 
reproduced with an intense clarity that allows 
one to appreciate the textures screaming 
away therein. Initially it sounds like 5,000 
other CDs I've cursed Ed for passing my way, 
which, through my feeling duty-bound to 
listen to the buggers, have used up precious 
time that could've been spent doing the 
washing up, ordering pizzas, or masturbating 
furiously. 

It starts off in the same way these sort of 
things usually do, but suddenly becomes 
interesting about a minute into the second 
track with some sort of feedback orchestra 
threatening to dump a tune into our laps 
whilst, tantalisingly, never quite doing it. 
Dachise use a lot of gritty textures looped 
into rhythms, which probably saves Twin 
Braids from becoming hopelessly abstract, 
and much of it sounds like you could get a 
nasty cut if you listened too closely. Of its 
kind, Merzbow is perhaps superior, but then 
there's a lot of similar things out there which 
this just micturates all over in terms of 
balancing the fine line between yer 
'interesting use of amplified washing machine' 
and actually listening to the bleeder more 
than once. 

My only complaint, beyond this not being hip 
hop, is that there’s too much of this noise 
stuff that only does one thing at a time. 


/ ' 


V; 




The Sound 

Dachise do two things at a time in many 
places, and even when this isn't the case, the 
cacophony is usually of sufficient textural 
depth to hold the attention. Generally 
speaking I'd like to see a trend towards these 
noise merchants daring to have more going 
on. Being sparing and minimal with your sonic 
statement is all very well, but if you're putting 
it on CD then folks will listen to it. So it'd be 
nice if any aggravation resulted from the 
author's mighty power over all forms of 
noise, rather than boredom and a thinner 
wallet. Do these people think 'Hmmm, at 
seven minutes this solo screech 
doesn’t seem quite long enough' or 
'that noise is making it just too 
darned interesting, better drop it'? 

Oh...and while I'm on the subject, 
this thing of dropping sounds in and 
out of the mix dry, without attack 
or decay, whilst initially startling on 
a few Nurse With Wound albums 
about twenty years ago, is starting 
to sound as obvious and hackneyed 
as the phrase 'c'mon everybody let's 
rock' does on the sort of records 
you expect to find containing such a 
request. Come on you lot. Put a bit 
of elbow grease into it, eh? 

Anyway, while Twin Braids could 
still go further, it seems like a step 
in the right direction, and there's 
enough to suggest that the author 
cares about his work. I don't know 
when I'll play this again exactly, and 
it certainly won't be when I have 
folks around in order to spoil them 
with my Ferrerro Rocher, but it has 
at least been saved from being hung 
on a nail in the priwy with all those 
other Dissecting Table and 
Dominator CDs which are, if 
nothing else, kinder to your arse 
than your ears. 

WAR ARROW 

!8 Pi/ton Place, Edinburgh, EH5 

2EX, Scotland 

assemblagepoint@hotmail, com 

Astro 

MSG of Electronics Wave 

GERMANY, TOCHNIT ALEPH 007 VINYL 
LP (1999) 

A fine solo work from Hiroshi Hasegawa, 
whom most of you will know already from 
the great Japanese noise band C.C.C.C., 
generators of some of the heaviest - but also 
the most soothingly-musical - pure atomic 
noise from Japan. Weirdly, there's arguably 
little difference between this and any 
C.C.C.C. track you might still be able to 
extract from the US label RRR, except that 
it's somehow less...well, less dense. Hiroshi 
may require the listener to concentrate more 
on the nuances of ear-splitting din without 
the distractions of two other performers 
getting in the way. As Astro, Hiroshi may not 
be in the league of Merzbow, but he works 
hard to make this a 
rewarding experience, 
with lots of manic 
analogue synth sound 
sources and much 
electronic 

manipulation of same. 

In this he comes close 


Projector SE7ENTH 

to aping the demented glory of a Sun Ra 
moog soio, only if anything he's far more 
extreme in his cosmic explorations. Pr essed 
in 220g white vinyl, limited to 50 copies and 
equipped with a bizarre science fiction sleeve 
of plastic dolls floating in an infinite gaiaxy. 
Copies were available through Fourth 
Dimension last year; or try the manufacturer 
direct. 

ED PINSENT 

D Lowenbruck, Sch/iemanstrasse 13, Berlin 
10437, Germany. 


Merzbow 

1930 

TZADIK TZ7214 CD (1998) 

I bought my copy of this CD at Wall of 
Sound, 2237 2nd Avenue at Bell, Seattle USA 
(wos@speakeasy.org) from the most 
comprehensive range of Merzbow and 
extreme Japanese music that I've ever seen. I 
was literally spoilt for choice but finally 
settled on this release because it looked and 
felt 'important', loaded with potential. The 
dude behind the counter regarded my 
purchase with a single nod and looked at me 
over the top of his glasses, exchanging with 
me a look of private understanding. I had 
made the right choice. 

Respect is due to the graphics department at 
Tzadik for more excellent packaging (if only 
the same could be said for some of the music 


issue 2000 

they choose to release) behind which is hiding 
Masami Akita's boldest and most focused 
statement to date. Wagnerian in its scope and 
delivery this is Merzbow's masterpiece, a 
towering example of HOW FAR you can take 
things when you just try. As always with 
Merzbow this sonic alchemy seems like a 
piece of piss for him - NO conventional band 
on this planet, not even a supergroup made 
up of Slayer, Napalm Death, Anal Cunt, 

Aphex Twin and Kraftwerk (just picture it!) 
could begin to come close to what this one 
man produces with his equipment. It starts 

slowly, like an engine turning over, and 
then quickly goes into turbocharged 
Hiroshima mode - and stays there for 
over a hour, it just never quits. The 
familiar quasar-dense backdrop of 
electronic thunder is there, the 
metallic Gdansk shipyard explosions 
are there, the jarring depth charge 
edits are there - but it's all cranked up 
so much higher than it's ever been 
before. Here Akita seems inspired, by 
demons driven to rip out some new 
shit this time. Where before a high 
pitched feedback whine would rush by, 
here it stays, a c/borg Howler Monkey 
sinking its claws into your skull and 
screeching in your ear, feeding its 
primal spinal signal directly into the 
soft and dormant parts of your brain. 
Then it's off, dancing across the tops of 
the oncoming waves - 200 feet high, 
stretching across the horizon, about to 
crash down on cities on fire and vast 
lakes of sizzling protoplasm. Gigantic 
chrome tentacles, each a mile long, 
break through the churning ocean 
surface and on wings of black leather 
and bullet proof glass the great god 
Cthulu heaves itself up into the sky, 
stretching its maw wide enough to 
swallow history, and looses a scream of 
rebirth that echoes across the 
universe, shredding nebulae as it 
passes. It flies off, gliding like a living 
moon across continents that heave like 
flesh as seismic spasms thrust jets of 
magma up into the sky. Meteors of 
molten cum ejaculated from the bleeding 
heart of the Earth rain down across the land 
and seas. Islands rise and fall against one 
another, hurricanes race across the latitudes 
heaving the raw matter of the planet's surface 
before them. Cthulu rides the jet streams, 
pissing acid and liquid nitrogen down onto the 
horrified faces of those who never dared to 
believe. 

OR - it's an empty room, lit by a single bare 
bulb. In the centre of the room is a chair. A 
man is sat in the chair, dressed in clothes of 
drab shades. He is staring out of a black 
window but not seeing anything. His eyes are 
wide open. His face is utterly without 
expression. He continues to stare. What he 
has done or about to do we can't ever know 
for sure but he is like us and therefore 
capable of anything. 

And Merzbow 1930 is the sound in his head. 

RIK RAWLING 
23/12/1999 

Tzadik, 61 East Eighth 
Street - Suite 126, New 
York, NY 10003, USA 
www. tzadik. com 


"GIGANTIC CHROME TENTACLES, EACH A MILE 
LONG, BREAK THROUGH THE CHURNING OCEAN 
SURFACE AND ON WINGS OF BLACK LEATHER AND 
BULLET PROOF GLASS THE GREAT GOD CTHULU 
HEAVES ITSELF UP INTO THE SKY,.." 



5 





The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2 


turning into a 
Mtf CROCHftP 




The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


BBB ANOTHER 
RANT OF 

BITTERNESS AND 

bile... aaa 


BY THE TIME YOU'RE 
READING THIS, WE HAVE 
ALREADY COME THROUGH 
THE Y2K HYPE-A-THON 
WITHOUT HAVING 
ENDURED ANYTHING 
RESEMBLING AJG 
BALLARD COLLAPSE-OF- 
CIVILISATION SCENARIO. 
THIS COMMONPLACE 
OBSERVATION IS SIMPLY 
TO JUSTIFY ANOTHER NEW 
SECTION OF MUSIC 
REVIEWS. IT'S ABOUT TIME 
WE HAD THE ARTISTS' 
TAKE ON THE SOFTWARE 
REVOLUTION, BECAUSE TO 
MY WAY OF THINKING 
EVERYTHING TO DO WITH 
COMPUTERS HAS 
ALREADY BECOME SO 
COMPLETELY DEBASED 
AND ABSURD. AND IT'S 
HAPPENED SO QUICKLY 
TOO. THE MOST OBVIOUS 
AND VISIBLE SIGNS ARE 
HOW CHEAP AND 
COMMERCIALISED 
COMPUTERS HAVE 
BECOME - MARKETED IN 
THE LOWEST AND 
TATTIEST POSSIBLE WAY. 
CD ROMS, THOSE BRIGHT 
SILVER DISCS, ONCE SEEN 
AS 'SPECIAL' TOOLS FOR 
RUNNING PROGRAMMES, 
ARE BECOMING TRASH 
IMMEDIATELY NOWADAYS; 
LITTLE KIDS HELP 
THEMSELVES TO FREE 
PROGRAMMES ON GAUDY 
PACKETS STACKED IN A 
CARDBOARD DISPLAY IN 
WOOLWORTHS, ONLY TO 
THROW THEM IN THE BIN 
INSTANTLY. OBNOXIOUS 
SPOTTY SCHOOL-LEAVERS 
DRESSED IN CORPOFTATE 
GREY CURRY'S OUTFITS 
STOP YOU IN THE STREET 
AND TRY AND PERSUADE 
YOU TO ACCEPT FREE 
INTERNET ACCESS. AND 
FOR YEARS THEY'VE BEEN 
TRYING TO CONVINCE YOU 
THAT A COMPUTER IS 
ANOTHER NECESSARY 
ADJUNCT TO YOUR FAMILY 
LIFE - COMPANIES LIKE 
T**E, T**Y AND D”L WILL 
TRY AND SELL YOU SOME 
OVERPRICED PIECE OF 
JUNK COMPLETE WITH 
DIGITAL CAMERA AND 
SOUND-CARD, 
CONTINUALLY PUSHING 
THE IMAGE OF A HAPPY 
FAMILY THAT NEEDN'T 


FEEL OVERWHELMED BY 
THE MINUTIAE OF 
TECHNOLOGY - IE THEY 
WON'T HAVE TO THINK FOR 
THEMSELVES EVER AGAIN. 
BUT THAT'S JUST A 
SNAPSHOT OF LATE 1990S 
LIFE WHICH NEEDN'T JUST 
APPLY TO COMPUTERS - IT 
COULD APPLY TO 
VIRTUALLY ANYTHING. 

HAVE YOU EVER 
CONSIDERED HOW 
ABSURDLY INEFFICIENT 
COMPUTERS REALLY ARE? 

I HAVE TO LOOK INTO THIS 
FOR MY JOB, WHICH 
INVOLVES A LITTLE 
RESEARCH IN THE ISSUES 
OF ELECTRONIC RECORDS 
MANAGEMENT. 
ELECTRONIC RECORDS 
ARE RECORDS WHICH 
DEPEND ON THE 
SOFTWARE THAT 
CREATED THEM TO 
REMAIN READABLE. IN 
ORDER TO CAPTURE AND 
PRESERVE DATA 
ARCHIVALLY, WE HAVE TO 
CAPTURE SOME OF THE 
SOFTWARE TOO. TURNS 
OUT THAT A LARGE 
PERCENTAGE OF 
COMPUTER MEMORY IS 
NOT DATA OR 
INFORMATION - IT'S SIMPLY 
TAKEN UP TO PERFORM 
LOTS OF OPERATIONS 
THAT HELP PUT THAT DATA 
TOGETHER. YOUR 
BRILLIANT DOCUMENT 
WHICH TOOK HOURS OF 
HARD TOIL DOESN'T 'EXIST' 
IN ONE PLACE IN THE 
COMPUTER - IT'S 
FRAGMENTED INTO LOTS 
OF TINY BYTES. MOST OF 
WHICH ARE SHEER 
GIBBERISH, AND iT'S THE 
SOFTWARE'S JOB TO 
ASSEMBLE THE MOSAIC 
FROM THE FOUR CORNERS 
OF THE CYBERSPACE 
GLOBE. BECAUSE IT ALL 
HAPPENS SO QUICKLY, 

AND IS PRESENTED WITH 
SUCH SMOOTH HIGH-TECH 
GRAPHICS ON-SCREEN, 
YOU RECEIVE THE 
ILLUSION THAT THE 
OPERATION IS CLEVER, 
INSTANT, AND EFFICIENT. 
FAR FROM IT. AMONGST 
ALL THE TRAFFIC OF DATA 
FLOWING AROUND YOUR 
NETWORK ARE POSTED 
MILLIONS AND MILLIONS OF 


'TRAFFIC COPS' - A 
WASTEFUL AND 
EXPENSIVE SET-UP 
MERELY TO PRESERVE 
THIS GROTESQUE 
ILLUSION OF ORDER AND 
SAFETY. A BIT LIKE 
MODERN CIVILISATION, 
REALLY! 

THE ARTISTS LUMPED 
TOGETHER IN THIS 
MUSICAL CATEGORY HAVE, 
I THINK, SUCCEEDED IN 
EXPOSING THIS MODERN 
FRAUD AND ITS MANY 
INVIDIOUS ASPECTS IN 
VARIOUS CLEVER WAYS. 
ALL OF THEM SENSE THE 
SHEER CHAOS AND INANE 
GIBBERISH THAT LURKS AT 
THE HEART OF THE 
MICROPROCESSOR. THE 
TRUE LANGUAGE OF 
COMPUTERS IS 
UNINTELLIGIBLE -AN 
ABSTRACT, MECHANICAL 
CODE THAT BECOMES 
UNREADABLE ONCE THE 
SOFTWARE THAT 
GENERATED IT BECOMES 
OBSOLETE. THESE CDS, IN 
MUSIC OR IN SOUND, LAY 
BARE THE MECHANICS OF 
THE MEANINGLESS 
OPERATIONS OF A TYPICAL 
SOFTWARE PROGRAM. 

BUT MORE THAN THIS, 
THEY PROCEED TO 
HARNESS THAT ENERGY 
AND SUBVERT IT - TURN IT 
AGAINST ITSELF, BUT ALSO 
TURN IT INTO SOMETHING 
USEFUL - SOMETHING 
AESTHETICALLY PLEASING 
IN ITS AUSTERE AND 
MECHANICAL WAY. OF 
COURSE, A LOT OF THE 
TIME, THE RESULTS CAN 
BE EXCEEDINGLY 
DIFFICULT TO LISTEN TO - 
STRANGE AND UNNATURAL 
- AND CAN PRESENT 
PROBLEMS IF WE'RE BEING 
ASKED TO PROCESS IT AS 
MUSIC. BUT IT IS THROUGH 
THIS INTERACTIVE 
PROCESS THAT WE STAND 
A CHANCE OF 
EMPOWERING OURSELVES 
AGAIN. 

I USE THE WORD 
'INTERACTIVE' ADVISEDLY. 

I KNOW NONE OF YOU ARE 
FOOLED BY THE 
FRAUDULENT CLAIM THAT 
CERTAIN WEBSITES, CD 
ROMS, ONLINE DIGITAL 
SERVICES, TV CHANNELS, 
OR INTERNET BANKING 
SYSTEMS ARE IN SOME 
WAY 'INTERACTIVE'. 
INTERACTIVE, MY CLEPES! 
ANSWERING 
MULTIPLE-CHOICE 
QUESTIONS BY CLICKING 
ON A BIG COLOURED 
GRAPHIC WITH YOUR 


MOUSE - IS ABOUT AS 
INTERACTIVE AS BANGING 
ON A PAVING STONE WITH 
A PLASTIC HAMMER! WHAT 
KIND OF DIALOGUE OR 
RELATIONSHIP CAN WE 
HAVE WITH SUCH 
SIMPLISTIC BINARY 
SYSTEMS? THE TRUTH IS 
THESE THINGS ARE 
WHOLLY MANIPULATIVE, 
REDUCING THE END-USER 
TO A MERE PUPPET. WE 
MERRILY PRESS OUR 
ICONS DREAMING OF 
FREEDOM OF CHOICE AND 
CONNECTING TO A NEW 
WORLD, WHEN WE ARE 
MORE LIKE SOME 
HALF-MAD INMATES OF 
BEDLAM FOOTLING WITH A 
TATTERED BAUBLE FOR 
THE AMUSEMENT OF THE 
PASSERS-BY. I STAND BY 
WHAT I WROTE IN ISSUE 4 - 
'TELEVISION, ADVERTISING, 
CINEMA AND THE 
INTERNET ARE 
INCOHERENT, GIBBERING 
MONSTERS; EATING 
INFORMATION, NOT 
RELAYING IT; THEY ARE 
LUMBERING CYCLOPS 
ADRIFT IN THE COSMOS.' 

A BLEAK VIEW, I KNOW - 
AND SINCE I'M ABOUT TO 
BUY A NEW MESH PC AT 
TIME OF WRITING, I 
INCLUDE MYSELF IN THIS 
BITTER SCENARIO TOO, SO 
DON'T FEEL ALIENATED. 
RATHER, SELECT AND SPIN 
SOME OF THESE DISCS 
BELOW FOR A GLIMPSE 
INTO THE INNER 
WORKINGS OF THE 
HEARTLESS COMPUTER 
MONSTER, AND LEARN 
YOUR OWN WAYS TO 
SUBVERT, AND SO 
MASTER, THE CHAOS OF 
TECHNOLOGY. TURN INTO 
A MICROCHIP TODAY! 

ED PINSENT 



Fennesz 

+475637-165108 
[plus forty seven 
degrees 56'37" 
minus sixteen 
degrees 51 '08"] 

TOUCH TO:4Q CD (1999) 

Christian Fennesz, one of the 
Mego 'superstars', and the man 
who brought us the sublime 
Fennesz Plays 45 last year, is on 
the warpath like a roaring beast 
here. The Mego team, 
concentrating on generating truly 
modern electronic music, have 
dispensed with conventional 
instruments like sequencers. 


7 



The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


drum machines and synths - and 
started to tinker directly with the 
sort of computer programming 
that makes such machines work 
in the first place. The most 
efficient way to do it seems to be 
to bypass the instruments and go 
straight to the programme, via a 
Powerbook. Using the keyboard 
and mouse, an intelligent artisan 
can vary the nature of his 
soundforms however he chooses. 

You'd be forgiven for thinking 
this is record in no way 'musical'. 
Under normal circumstances I'd 
be put off too, but one listen to 
the furious and powerful sound 
textures on this (and other 
Mego-related items) will excite 
your neurons in ways you'd 
never dreamed possible - and 
change your mind in a second. 
This work is in fact more musical 
than much of what passes for 
musical entertainment in the 
welter of techno-based releases. 
At first iisten, this may seem an 
excessively abstract work - 
perhaps brutally so. But all the 
features of exciting music are 
there, really - depth, texture, 
dynamics, volume and rhythm - 
but expressed as purely abstract, 
digital tones, freed from the 
associations of melody and 
harmony. 

There are at least three great 
features to Christian Fennesz's 
work. One - unpredictability. His 
best moments - and these would 
include the wonderful final track 
on this not-overlong CD - 
confound the expectations of any 
listener, leaving one puzzled. 
What was that? Why did it stop 
so suddenly when it was just 
starting to say something? This 
sense of puzzlement can turn 
into 3 good thing, if you'll let it. 
This music is not inconsequential, 
because it leaves a very strong 
impression with you. 

Two - Brevity. There's a lot of 
information in a Fennesz track. 

He has more ideas than most 
electronic buffoons manage in 
their entire career, so many 
indeed that he plays two or three 
of them together at the same 
time. Each component is clearly 
stated, and the listener needs 
only to work that little bit harder 
to distinguish the lines of 
thought. But be quick, because 
many of these tracks are tight 
and concise. 

Three - pleasure. Fragments of 
musical notes bubble up from 
time to time within the flying 
sheets of crunchy, textured 
noise. A noise so palpable it's like 
the inside of a Crunchy Bar. Or 
is rather that some of these 
tracks started life as a melodious 
tune, and have been extensively 
reworked and taken apart into 
their basic, mechanical 
components? 


This is the second solo full-length 
recording from Christian Fennesz 
- the first was Hotel Parallel - 
and it's made entirely with a 
guitar and a computer. And it's 
absolutely superb. 

ED PINSENT 

A more complete MEGC 
survey will appear in issue 8. 


[The User] 

Symphony #1 for 
dot matrix printers 

NETHERLANDS, 
STAALPLAAT STMCD 016 
CD (1999) 

Ah, now here's an entertaining 
angie. This joker has recorded 
the sound of hardware - in this 
case some clapped-out dot 
matrix printers doing their thang, 
with overdubs and effects pedals 
to give those weedy sounds some 
extra oomph, and now presents 
it as a diverting form of music. 

To discover such ancient 
near-obsolescent machines inside 
an office environment wouid 
provoke howls of mirth amongst 
your colleagues - are you still 
using that old thing, they cry? So 
[The User] rescues them from 
oblivion and inscribes their 
creaky gasps, buzzes and 
wheezes onto a recording and 
preserves them for posterity. It 
might still provokes howls of 
mirth from some listeners, but 
for different reasons. In the same 
way, seasoned computer gamers 
prize their 1 979 Atari consoles 
above the latest version of 
Dreamcast (actually, they 
don't...); musicians cling to their 
old valve amplifiers, Copycat 
echo units and analogue synths 
because they sound and perform 
much better than modern 
digitised units, [The User] 
demonstrates there is much 


value to be reclaimed from the 
past. I've referred above in my 
rant to the relentless treadmill of 
consumerism that seems to be 
magnified considerably in the 
mass market for computers; 
software designers constantly 
tinker with programmes, bringing 
out a new 'upgraded' version 
annually, thus supposedly 


rendering the previous version 
obsolete. Indeed there is one 
reassuring TV advert for a 
company that builds in some kind 
of insurance contract that means 
you won't get left behind when 
ail the software and hardware 
you just bought is upgraded next 
year, and you're left stranded 
with version 1 .2. This greedy 
race for novelty, faster 
multi-tasking speeds and more 
memory space is exposed as a 
nonsensical caucus-race by this 
Symphony CD, which celebrates 
the hardware of yesteryear and 
frames it within an art context as 
enduring as Jasper Johns' 
Ballantyne beer cans cast in 
bronze. It may not be a massively 
innovative statement, but here it 
be. 

ED PINSENT 



Various Artists 
Or: Some Computer 
Music Issue 1 

OR ISSUE 1 CD (1999) 

[The User] above celebrates the 
physical nature of computer 
hardware. Here's another 
approach. The sound artists on 
this outstanding compilation turn 
themselves into virtual 
microprocessors, by absorbing 
huge tracts of found sounds and 
(through electro-acoustic 
methods) processing them in 
much the same way as a 


computer would: at hyper-speed, 
mechanically, and without 
discrimination. It s an exhilarating 
listen. In less than an hour, you 
can take a whirlwind space-ship 
tour of the entire pianet. it can 
be a frightening snapshot of the 
hideous excesses of 20th century 
modern life today, but that's 
nothing; what's worse is the even 
more frightening visions of the 
future lying in wait for us all. 

Effectively, this CD uses the 
methods of classical musique 
concrete - and gathers hours of 
sampled tapes from real life. 
Mostly human voice samples, but 
also natural and imaainarv 
sounds, then proceeds to 
reprocess the tapes. All the 
composers here do their 
reprocessing through computers 
or computer based methods, and 
each achieve disturbing results in 
their own special way. Through 
reconstruction of documentary 
sources, and transferring 
magnetic tape into digital bytes, 
tiny fragments of future 
possibilities leak through onto 
the CD, and thence through your 
speakers. The only drawback is 
how you interpret this 
information - it won't help you 
win the National Lottery, but 
then it might give you the edge 
on your colleagues at work who 
are still living in the UK circa 
1955. 

There probably isn't anything 
very new about scrambling 
obtainable data to obtain a new 
spin on the present. If 
Nostradamus could have been 
bothered, he too might have 
used computers; all he effectively 
did was analyse and process the 
facts, moods and elements of his 
own time to discern a prototype 
for human behaviour. By 
restating these patterns in a 
certain way, he delivered 
plausible scenarios for the next 
thousand years, Actually they 
were completely implausible, and 
their appeal only arises from the 
threatening elements in selected 
verses that seem to refer to our 
own century, and these were 
mistranslated in the first place. So 
as for seeing the future - it's 
complete bunkum! 

But this CD still contains a vast 
array of complex information, 
and because the sound-picture it 
presents is so hyper-busy and 
thrillingly intense, there's a 
sublime listening pleasure to be 
had from trying to listen to all of 
its corners simultaneously. For 
the most part, the trip is 
extremely loud and 
terror-inducing, with the 
exception of one long conceptual 
quiet track with lots of 
disembodied voices. 

Part of a magazine series from 
Michael Harding's Touch 



8 


The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


subsidiary label OR, this 
compilation brings together 
people from the world of 
academic composition, such as 
Trevor Wishart and Stephen 
Travis Pope, with avant-techno 
guys like General Magic and 
Aphex Twin. The booklet is 
packed with texts both readable 
and unreadable, screen shots 
from computer screens, and 
bewildering diagrams - plus 
paranoid-fuelled observations 
about the inexorable growth of 
city life, or the impact of 
automation on business and 
organisational structures. In this 
case the individual contributions 
are secondary to the whole 
effect of spinning the disc start to 
finish, edited together as a suite 
of ghastly visions of the whole 
state of the 

information-overloaded, fat and 
lazy world that prevails today. 

But no ironic images of 
baseball-cap wearing white trash 
gorged on MacDonalds fries; the 
substrata of moral decay is far 
more fascinating. 

ED PINSENT 

BBB 

Shirt Trax 

Good News About 
Space 

LIP 9 CD (1999) 

i 8 bedevilled tracks here almost 
entirely realised using computers 
by Mark Fell and Jeremy Potter, 
who didn't however want to 
waste lots of time working with 
programming and sequencing. So 
a lot of this 'Good News' is 
brought to us by real-time 
playing on samplers. To their 
credit, Shirt Trax have a credo 
that runs 'we’re not so much 
about the aesthetics of digital 
glitches or broken systems. We 
can't relate to that'. Given that 
Fell's other activities shade into 
installation art and that Potter is 
a Brighton-based DJ, a glib first 
impression would cast this 
record as bridging the gap 
between experimental art and 
dance music. Perhaps this kind of 
sound might just appeal to lovers 
of dance and Techno music, but 
this is a wholly wrong 
assumption...Shirt Trax certainly 
use dance-ish beats, but only a 
dedicated twitcher could slip into 
the shaking groove for the five or 
six seconds allowed before this 
music reverts to its brilliantly 
insanely illogical sequencing of 
strange and unearthly noises. 
'Perplexing' doesn't even begin to 
describe this mind-melding 
melange of sounds - these Shirt 
Trax are fucking with our minds 
big time. 20 odd tracks of totally 
electronic relentless absurdist 
pranks, mostly abstract noise of a 


highly appealing mode. But 
occasionally lapsing into jokey 
retro styled nonsense that seems 
quaint, old-fashioned, imaginary 
soundtrack for non-existent 
1 950s cartoons or used in 
another imaginary World's Fair 
pavilion in some never-never 
land of the brain. 'We were 
aware of the kind of academic 
history of what we were doing, 
but we didn't relate to that 
either', muse Short Trax. You 
see, how music like this can make 
you remember things that never 
happened in the first place? 
Memory implants through art. 
People are always afraid of how 
computers might be able to 
rewrite history...one effective 
way to do this is to rewire 
people's brains with false 
impressions and false memories. 
There is no 'good news about 
space', after all Matt Groening's 
Futurama shows us a world 
where they've even forgotten 
who was the first man to land on 
the moon! 

ED PINSENT 

BBB 

UBSB 

Traceroute 

ASH INTERNATIONAL [RIP] 
ASH # 4.7 VINYL LP [2000] 

Now things are getting grim. One 
listen to this extremely strange 
mini-LP and you'll think twice 
before you sign up for Internet 
access, believe me. In fact, so 
horrified will you be that you'll 
probably launch a solo campaign 
for the complete abolition of the 
World Wide Web. This record, 
realised from a 'research centre' 
in Scandinavia by four European 
artists, comprises a solid wall of 
utterly alien noises, derived from 
(we are informed) 'data 
harvested from the Internet'. 
Anxious to probe further into 
the secrets of the web's darkest 
corners, these science-guys 
wrote a special sort of 'bug' 
programme that could convert all 
the data it encountered into 
soundfiles. They launched their 
'bug' into the Internet ether in a 
clandestine way, letting it gather 
whatever traffic it could. Now 
we really were getting near the 
'traffic cops' I was describing 
earlier; this 'bug' outwitted them 
all, laughing 'eat my dust, 
coppers!’ as it sped past at 1 50 
mph. 

When the UBSB boys retrieved 
their mighty micro-midget and 
hacked it open, this is what they 
found. Now, you could easily 
play this record and mistake it 
for some 30 minutes of 
white-noise aural garbage. And in 
a sense, digital garbage is what's 
out there anyway. But that is not 


the point of this investigation. 
Instead, your brain feels like it's 
been instantly stuffed with 
information, as though you've 
been able to plug the cortex of 
your brain directly into a gushing 
bitstream. Of course, it's all pure 
fantasy - the sort of fantasy that 
our forefathers may have had 
when the radio was first 
invented. They probably looked 
up at the night sky and imagined 
they saw the ghosts of swing 
bands, announcers with plummy 
home counties accents, and 
corny soap opera actors all 
speaking at once, in a cosmic 
dance with the constellations. In 
the same way, we think we're so 
modern as we turn on our 52K 
Modems and start sweeping the 
world for useful fragments of 
knowledge. And what we find out 
there is an incoherent Tower of 
Babel, constructed out of 
Gigabytes, by narrow-minded 
nerds and faceless corporations 
in equal quantity. 

More than any record so far in 
the list, this Traceroute record 
gets closest to the reality of the 
computer's sheer inanity. The 
only difference is that this record 
is bareiy recognisable as 'music', 
not even as a species of 
spaced-out, whacked-out Techno 
created by Zombie DJs from a 
chill-out room on Planet Pluto. 
Perhaps, in line with many of the 
Ash International releases, it's 
more of a documentary 
recording. In which case it's an 
extremely bleak vision of the 
future. Essential therefore. 

ED PINSENT 

BBB 

Time's Up 
Obsolete 

NETHERLANDS, 
STAALPLAAT STMCD 017 3" 
CD (1999) 

Yes, it's very jokey but not a 
totally disposable nugget of 
poppy pap. The Time's Up 
people are mainly obsessed with 
1 979, the year of Atari's Space 
invaders, and use 
music clips from 
Pac-Man and 
associated arcade 
games - partly 
because they love 
the clunky 
technology, and 
partly just for the 
plain stubborn fun 
of being retro. A 
slap in the face to 
the ultra-graphic 
realism of 
Playstation, 

Nintendo 64 and 
Dreamcast. 

Through simple 
but clever edits, a 


species of dumb Ur-Techno is 
revealed to have been lurking at 
the mechanical heart of our old 
vintage computer games - and 
this is the sound of Time's Up. 

Also, sadly, they use a bundle of 
rather tired old samples and clips 
from equally retro sources, going 
back another 20 or so years from 
their starting point - Elvis, Las 
Vegas, Frank Sinatra and The 
Sands Hotel feature on one track, 
fairground music on another, 
telephone samples (yawn!) on a 
third - and silly cartoon voices 
(including groaning zombies!) pop 
up everywhere, making 
supposedly ironic comments on 
the vacuity of modern life, or 
something. Actually some of 
these little comic-strip vignettes 
work quite well, like the 'Keep 
Going' track that depicts a 
madcap race in Mad Max-styled 
cars. Less successful is the 
'Nuclear Football' cut, which has 
the sheer gall to try on that old 
chestnut about how arcade 
games are only one step away 
from being World War Three. 
Yes, we've all seen that dumb 
John Badham movie too. Get 
outta here! 

My sympathies however do go 
out to old hardware like the 
Commodore VC2Q, the BBC 
computer and the Amstrad. A lot 
of the information generated by 
these devices is quickly 
becoming unreadable, locked in a 
carrier medium that can't be read 
unless you visit a working 
computer museum (and they do 
exist, believe me). This may not 
seem a serious problem to you 
lot, but there is actually a 
significant quantity of information 
created by the Government 
which falls into this category. 
Unlike the old Chancery records, 
still readable today after over 
1 ,000 years, we're heading for a 
future filled with public records 
which will be neither records 
(because the disks have decayed) 
or public (because nobody can 
access them). 

ED PINSENT 



9 




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10 





The Sound 

High Rise 

Disallow 

JAPAN, MODERN MUSIC (PSF 
RECORDS) PSFD-78 CD (1996) 

If you hear nothing else, check out 'Icon' on 
this five-track mini-LP on a compact disc, a 
near perfect anthem of garage punk grunge 
guitar noise riffing which is propelled into 
outer space by the intense solo screechings of 
lead guitarist Munehiro Narito. Notable 
also here is the exemplary drumming, 
and brilliant drum sound, of Pill. If 
you've only heard records made after 
1 985 you may have forgotten what real 
drumming sounds like. This is it. You 
could almost pity him as a jazz 
drummer trapped in a power-rock trio, 
but this being Asahito Nanjo's trio 
there are no such genre-bound 
constraints. Freedom is their 
watchword. I don't know of Pill's 
outside activities in Tokyo, but rest 
assured he could play alongside Milford 
Graves and hold his head high. The 
reason I like 'Icon' - featured also on 
their blistering Live CD - so much is 
because it stuck in my mind after High 
Rise's perfect short set at The 
Centurion, which we reviewed in issue 
five.. .now when I slam it in the CD 
player I make a complete buffoon of 
myself as I caper about the room like a 
white ape on speed, knocking over the 
standard lamp. Only true testosterone-fuelled 
rock can do this, even to a nerdoid such as 
myself. 

ED PINSENT 

Pornoise 

1KG 

USA, RRR / STATUTORY TAPE 
STATAP 1 7 5 X CASSETTES (1 993) 

Masami Akita to you, paL.this is a massive 
dollop of his early noise works, from a period 
about which I know very little but presume 
he was still displaying evidence of an interest 
in musique concrete (he'd been shocked as a 
teenager by hearing Pierre Schaeffer on the 
radio), and was practising a very extreme 
version of same; and that he was generating a 
brand of noise somewhat less loud and 
relentless than his post- 1 990 take no 
prisoners gale-force onslaught mode. 

Which isn't to suggest these 10 pieces 
are actually any more listenable than 
your copies of Venerotogy or Pulse 
Demon which you maniacs treasure so 
highly; these Pornoise exercises are still 
prime examples of the ghastly and grim, 
juxtaposing very nasty irruptive and 
disturbing noises with high-pitched 
whines, and occasionally throwing in 
some looped voice materials just to 
anchor you to some sense of reality. 

Because - be warned - there is an 
abiding sense of unreality that you can 
pick up from prolonged exposure to 
this sort of esoteric noise. The 
elements that make it all a bit more 
palliative are.. .well, there’s a bit more 
space to get your bearings now and 
again (ie dynamics; nowadays a dense 
Merzbow piece barely pauses for 
breath, usually); and there are 
sometimes recognisable instruments 


Projector SE7ENTH 

lurking like metal picnic tables in the foggy 
mixture, most probably some form of 1980s 
synth, attuned to an unholy setting which the 
manufacturers would certainly not 
recommend. Not because they might damage 
the machines, but because they would 
certainly damage the environment and all 
forms of carbon-based life in the immediate 
area. You can just see the dead pigeons piling 
up outside Masami's apartment as he 


concocted these horrendous 40-minute 
hell-flavoured lollipops, like some twisted 
candy-man of the nether regions. 

But hey- I'm concentrating on the wrong 
details - this box set is all about SEX! SEX! 
SEX!, a palpable presence flouncing and 
flopping about like enormous perverted flesh 
coloured dinosaur-shaped dollops in a crinkly 
polythene bag. It may only be a nasty rumour, 
but allegedly Masami Akita makes an 
alternative living as a pornographer, selling 
and exhibiting choice images of specialist 
bondage activities. In this pink Pornoise box, 
you get no bondage as such but through 
explicit titles you get basic blunt references 
like 'Loop Fuck' or 'Penis Art is Microphone'; 
and more subtle De Sadean suggestions of 
delicious transgression in 'De-Filement of his 
Nubile Young Wife'. ..the title lettering is 
printed in true retro 1 970s style, harking back 
to the one true Golden Age of Porn (so they 


issue 2000 

tell me) ...and there are the sexy looped 
noises, including orgasmic grunts of 
satisfaction repeated into infinity (Masami 
Akita uses magnetic tape in the same way a 
bondage freak uses nylon cord), until 
effectively the whole human race takes on the 
appearance of big greasy hogs drenched in 
sweat and covered with orange lard. 

Taboo noises, images, ideas - they may start 
out shocking and objectionable, but amazingly 
you get used to it very quickly. It kinda 
washes over you after a while, but 
there's no doubt that this extreme noise 
is intended as the perfect musical 
accompaniment to a good bout of anal 
teenage fucking activity - the rhythms 
could help any impotent man get into 
gear, I suspect. This sentiment of course 
is backed up by the atrocious sleeve 
design by Trevor Brown, a draughtsman 
of rapidograph-wielding feme whose 
work is I understand highly valued 
among the Whitehouse school of 
followers. Finding his clinical renderings 
of close-up genitalia boring beyond 
belief, I choose not to number myself 
among their ranks, but what do you 
care... This was originally issued on 
Masami's own ZSF Produkt label in 
Japan in 1984, then in 1993 this weird 
reissue box popped out from RRR in 
America no doubt during a phase when 
they were intent on fucking up the 
minds of the world with sick perverted 
noise. It probably would have been part of 
Extreme label's reissue programme of 50 
Merzbow CDs, if they could ever have got it 
together. 

ED PINSENT 

Gyaatees 

Gyaatees Volume 2: 
Gyaatees Meets Mani 
Neumeier 

JAPAN, CAPTAIN TRIP RECORDS 
CTCD-1 81 / 1 82 2 X CD (1 999) 

Cosmic Kurushi Monsters was a fantastic 
introduction to the brave new world of 
Japanese rock music and remains a favourite 
‘round our way'. Consequently I've developed 
what's best described as a 'prepared ear' for 
anything that bounces off that side of the 

pianet and into the Rough Trade racks. 
Lacking the mad packaging I’ve come to 
expect from our sushi-snarfing cousins 
the cover photos of what looks like 
shaved Tibetan monks and 
concentration camp survivors 
suggested an altogether more serious 
venture. Fair enough. 

It kicks off with what sounds like a 
child's toy being intermittently 
squeezed by a bored adult watching 
daytime TV. Bass rumbles and ghostly 
string notes emerge and it has all the 
makings of a truly disturbing horror 
movie soundtrack - with no small debt 
to Varese at his most 'challenging'. 
Unfortunately, any chance for the 
listener to immerse themselves in the 
controlled maelstrom is ruined by the 
incessant ranting of the vocalists. They 
could be cries of pain or orgasmic 
release but they serve NO purpose, 




The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 



corrupting the atmospherics like a 
turd in the stewpot. 

Impressed by the musicianship I 
persevered but the karaoke madmen 
never let up for the entirety of both 
discs. And unlike the vocal technique 
of someone like Yamantaka Eye or 
Masonna, who raise the hackles and 
plenty of questions (the least of which 
being 'What ARE they on?') this is just 
annoying. Even if arch-noise deviants 
V/VM managed to splice Slint with 
The Birdie Song' it wouldn't sound as 
ruined as this. 

Based on the evidence here it could 
be argued that, after once sounding so 
fresh and energised, the Japanese 
approach to structure and rock 
dynamics has become as dull and 
predictable as that which it initially 
promised to sweep away. Recent 
'New Japan' releases from Tzadik have 
all sounded like variations on the same 
hurried wank and coming after the 
genuinely amazing and groundbreaking 
work of Ground Zero, Boredoms, 

Optical 8, and Melt Banana this merely 
sound like a bunch of competent but 
mad old fools, resigned to doing the 
house band gig on a cruise liner going 
nowhere. 

RIK RAWLING 08/12/1999 

Captain Trip Records, 3-17-14 

Minami-Koiwa, Edogawa-Ku, Tokyo , 

Japan 

Gyaatees 

Gyaatees Volume 3: 
Welcome Motoharu - 
Yoshizawa Last Live 

JAPAN, CAPTAIN TRIP 
RECORDS CTCD-200 CD (1999) 

After being less than impressed by 
Gyaatees // 1 wasn't exactly looking 
forward to this. But it starts out well enough 
- a slow build, solemn and earnest and not a 
million miles away from something like 
Godspeed You Black Emperor! Intrigued by 
this I pressed on - bloodcurdling 80s synth 
and Level 42-style bass slowly lowered into 
molten vats like Arnie at the end of T2, a 
grim mood shot through with shafts of light 
from the Toy Shop. It could easily be a Naked 
City single (ah, if only. Storming the Top Ten. 
Yamantaka Eye scaring the shit out of the 
Sclub7 girls backstage at TOTP) played at 
33rpm on a crappy old ghetto blaster 
dropped down a lift shaft. Maybe I'm making it 
sound better than it actually is - but it is 
musically interesting - dynamic, focused and, 
at times, not unlike Miles Davis circa Live 
Evil/Dark Magus but it is ruined beyond all 
hope by the monks howling in the 
background. Don't these guys know when 
they are on to a good thing? Musically they'd 
get my vote anyday but somebody should tell 
those fuckers who can't shut up to do just 
that. Better yet, muzzle them, slash their 
throats - whatever it takes to stop them 
emitting any kind of sounds from their gullets. 
You may think I'm overstating the case but 
there is a great record here strangled at birth. 
It's like playing Miles Davis and having your 




Mascara-Sue 

Biro 2 

AUSTRALIA, DUAL PLOVER HP0649 
CD (1999) 

A real winner this one, a mini-CD of very 
eccentric Japanese indie pop music adding 
more weight to the Dual Plover grand project 
of world domination through pop music - or 
to be precise, high-quality, subversive, and 
eccentric popular music. The unbridled 
enthusiasm effervescing from the bubbly, 
young and probably very sexy players is 
infectious; not since Jad Fair and his brother 
David unleashed the triple LP set Half 
Gentlemen Not Beasts, have we heard such 
unfettered energy, the pent-up release of 
happy youngsters just fizzing with sheer 
gratitude to be finally let loose in a recording 
studio like tiny tots in the world's biggest 
sweetshop. Mascara-Sue deploy a winning 
formula - sweet sing-song voices, cheesy 


organ, biscuit tin drums and whatever 
else they can seize with their tongs, 
setting it against walls of feedback and 
grindy noise which assume the shape of 
the walls of a big bouncy castle. Not an 
original formula to be sure, but The Jesus 
and Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine 
never managed anything as 
natural-sounding as these larksters. Then 
again, you know what a sap I am for all 
things Japanese.. .this yummy release 
comes in a bright process-red package 
and looks good enough to eat. But then, 
wait'll you see the inner-sleeve collage of 
a pussy cat with a wrestling mask 
face.. .even an old grouch like me is 
lapping this up, so just think what you 
seventeen year-old hipsters will make of 
it. 


ED PINSENT 


PO Box 983, Darlinghurst NSW 1300, 
Australia 

www. ebom. org/plover 


Yximalloo 

Yximalloo 

USA, OLD GOLD RECORDINGS 
696969, VINYL LP(1999) 

I've grown to regard Old Gold releases 
with the same sense of trepidation that 
overwhelms me when I see a paper 
seller for the Socialist Worker Party 
approaching, desperately trying to make 
eye contact, wearing his regulation issue 
ord inary-b loke-j ust- 1 ike-y ou-even-though 
-Daddy-is-the-head-honcho-at-ICI 
denims. That is, nearly everything I've 
heard from the label has been uniformly 
shite but for one or two tracks which, 
through actually being listenable, only 
serve to emphasise the sheer 
crapituditousness (if that's a word) of the 
rest. 


So, boy - is this a pleasant surprise, 
although as it's actually a compilation of 
Yximalloo things previously released on 
the Japanese label Sakura, perhaps my theory 
still stands. Whatever. Yximalloo is the great 
endeavour of one Naofumi Ishimaru, or 
perhaps was, if the fact that the tracks here 
date from between 1981 to 1 986 at the latest 
is an indication. He worked with pretty basic 
equipment by the sound of it, and the 
recordings are of cassette quality, or to be 
more specific, 1980s cassette quality. This 
isn't a bad thing. The music still works, but is 
leant a primitive ambience as though much of 
this stuff was retrieved from the black box of 
a plane last seen in the Bermuda Triangle 
many many years ago. Naofumi uses synths, 
traditional Japanese instruments, what sounds 
like a biscuit tin drumkit, and just about 
everything else he can get hold of to weave 
these idiosyncratic little soundtracks, most of 
which are purely instrumental. 

After about three plays it really gets its claws 
into you. Very little actually sounds like it was 
intended to be heard by a quantity of ears 
running into double figures, and it's probably 
this singularity of purpose, coupled with the 
fact that Ishimaru seems to be coming from a 
distinctly non-Western tradition, that makes 
it so appealing. I can see why it's on vinyl - 
clear vinyl in a clear plastic sleeve by the way 
- rather than another medium. These tracks 


window open while outside a gang sing the 
Chas N Dave back catalogue. A whole album 
of this is simply taking the piss. 

RIK RAWLING 08/12/1999 




The Sound 

sound too substantial for the relatively 
transient nature of cassettes, and, if crudely 
digitised onto a glossy polycarbonate, the 
music would seem incongruous, like pie and 
mash served on antique bone china. This 
music feels like it needs the chunky tactile 
medium of vinyl with all those squiggly lumpy 
wee grooves. 

There are two crap tracks I should mention, 
which I expect are included through some 
sort of contractual obligation if Old Gold's 
previous form is any indication. 'China Pong' 
and 'Eei Fishing in Moon Night' just sound like 
demos that The Residents might have sent to 
the BBC hoping to bag a commission to score 
the latest series of Trumpton. But with the 
cranky low resolution genius at work 
elsewhere, this pair of duds are easily 
overlooked. 

I'm frankly amazed to find such a fine product 
from this label, and can't help wondering if it's 
actually some elaborate joke - Yximalloo 
never existed and the Sakura address is really 
a hamburger outlet that Ben Young came 
across on his travels. Although Old Gold are 
to be commended for their bravery in making 
some of their stuff available when they are 
based in a country where handguns are legal, 
I'm inclined to suspect this is the genuine 
article. Earlier Old Gold items like How To 
Kick Yourself are too rubbish to be forgiven, 
but for once it's hats off to Mr Young. In 
realising this he gone done a good thing. Ben, 
this album is the way forward! I hope 
Ishimaru's still doing things because this is a 
cracker. 

WAR ARROW 

Additional note by Ed - Naofumi tshimaru is 
of course a great friend of fellow nerd-rock 
genius, the American Jad Fair of Half 
Japanese, and in 1993 they released a joint 
effort CD Half Robot on Paperhouse 
Records (PAPCD/5). The first of many we 
suspect. 

Tabata 

Brainsville 

ELSIE + JACK RECORDINGS EAJ003 
CD (1998) 

Fine solo recordings comprise the debut solo 
CD from this great Japanese artiste, in places 
reminiscent of the solo work of Magical 
Power Mako - although not quite as wacked 
out as Mako, Tabata has his own very 
distinctive voice, and achieves moments of 
transcendent power and noise. This isn't bad 
going, considering that technically it's a step 
above a four-track bedroom recording - this 
was apparently 'recorded in a tiny room', 
using only electric guitars with occasional 
Casio keyboard. Tabata opens up that tiny 
imaginary space and, first and foremost, 
unleashes a huge, terrific sound when he lets 
his guitar roar. Imagine the power of a series 
of precision-target grenade explosions, 
converted into musical blasts. Tabata also 
manages fine pastoral acoustic guitar 
episodes, weird backward tape fragments, 
endless droney strummy jams, and 
inter-galactic electric solos as he paints his 
infinite vistas across the Milky Way. As you 
can guess from these pointers, he is (in 
places) highly influenced by German 
Kosmische music, in particular Can, Popol 
Vuh and Amon Duul, but the same could be 
said about Mako and Brast Burn, (see last 


Projector SE7ENTH 

issue) who were also Japanese. Tabata adds 
great value to the artform of overdubbing, 
holding musical conversations with himself 
that are meaningful and not just another form 
of introverted doodling, and realising it all 
with a very compelling and incredible sound. 
Aided in this by Akira Yamanouchi who 
contributes feedback and guitar synth. 

Mitsuru Tabata is, perhaps surprisingly, a 
guitar wielding member of the blistering 
no-mercy band Zeni Geva. Richo Johnson: 
Tabata's work succeeds where others 
possessing similar aspirations merely, at best, 
limp along’. Highly recommended this... 

ED PINSENT 



Ground-Zero 

Last Concert 

ALCOHOL ALGZ1 CD CD (1 999) 

This might just be one of the most intense 
and important records released last year - 
and yet was anyone playing it during the 
Millennium celebrations? A more apt 
soundtrack for viewing fireworks, bathing in 
rivers of fire, or simply setting HM The 
Queen on fire with a cigarette lighter, I can’t 
imagine - than this document of final live 
recordings from the mighty group led by 
Otomo Yoshihide, Ground-Zero. In this 
blistering barrage the large-scale, expensive, 
fish-biting combo from Japan land punch after 
punch on a hapless audience and realise the 
hopes and dreams of the far-flung Otomo and 
the eleven incredible musicians represented 
hereon - to say nothing of the great work of 
their sound system engineer, Kondo Yoshiaki. 
The first two tracks, ’Multi-Gravity I’ and 
’Multi-Gravity 2’, both answer each other in 
name, and in turn emphasise two of the 
primary musical interests of the grand-master 
furioso flash-mobile, guitarist, turntabiist and 
composer Otomo. The first refers extensively 
to electronic music's history, the second 
celebrates free jazz. Both of those elemental 
forces - perhaps two of the most relevant 
developments in 20th century music - seared 
the mind of the young Otomo during his 
college days in Tokyo. Check out the 
interview this ish for the stories of how 
hearing a Moog synth, and seeing Milford 
Graves perform, blew his mind with pockets 
of dynamite laced with nitro. 


13 


issue 2000 

The third track, 'Consume-Red' live - I heard 
it at the LMC Festival some years ago - here 
links both of the above named musics along 
with samples, 'ethnic' sounds, and the tightest 
ensemble playing this side of a 1974 King 
Crimson lineup. The energy and control of 
this group simply surpass the bounds of 
possibility - never in your life could you even 
imagine such quality. This version of 
'Consume Red' is by the by far less dominated 
by the two drum kits than the original studio 
version, and pushes a terrifying array of great 
weird sounds to the front of the mix. And it's 
a mix of clarity. Far from being simply 'noise' 
as the heathen would have it, this music is 
simply very very loud music and there's a lot 
of it happening at once in the same place and 
very quickly. If that adds up to noise in your 
maths book, buy yourself a new calculator. 
The sheer density and weight of 
Ground-Zero's music - boasting as many 
strata as there are layers of stone between 
Queensland and the earth's core - has never 
been better managed and realised with the 
perfection it deserves than on this great 
record. 

We'll miss Ground-Zero, won't we? 

Ground -Zero's 'project' - for want of a better 
word to describe this seismic earthquake in 
modern creative upheaval - genuinely did 
stretch the envelope of what we consider to 
be music, of what might be possible in sound. 
It was an heroic attempt to see how much 
could actually be piled into the furnace of a 
man's burning ears, how many super-talented 
(and high-salaried) players you could 
legitimately book onto one international stage 
before the world economy took a nose-dive, 
and how much the human frame could 
withstand before reaching meltdown or 
implosion. Far from any associations with 
excess - the excess of 1970s stadium rock, 
show-off soloing, or posturing ninnies 
swathed with dry ice and lasers - 
Ground-Zero offered us generosity, a horn of 
plenty. And now it is no longer shocking, but 
finally acceptable. The atomic meltdown it 
once seemed to be is now settling down into 
a shimmering mushroom cloud, revealing 
itself to be a concentrated mass of solid 
vitamin-rich music, a hazelnut in every bite! 
And, rest assured, records like this one will 
continue to have a 'half-life' of at least 1 0,000 
years, like weapons-grade Plutonium. 

And yet sensing perhaps the danger of 
burning himself out in the great conflagration 
he was setting his torch to, Otomo has since 
chosen a more contemplative path, putting 
silence at the centre of his new universe. The 
lengthy sleeve-note here dwells, not without 
a touch of sadness, on the prolonged and 
ritualistic dissolution of the Ground-Zero 
group. If your life was ever touched by their 
passing during their brief fling on this sorry 
globe, then count yourself a fortunate person. 
Now buy this as a souvenir and be glad. 

ED PINSENT 

Alcohol Records, PO Box 556, London SE5 

0RL, UK 

More music from 
Japan in the ATOMS 
OF PURE NOISE 
section 



Laminar 

Ante-Chamber 

USA, SOLEILMOON RECORDINGS SOL 92 CD (1999) 


Kicks off with an impressive start in the opening tracks - or 'Sectors' as this particular 
package would have it. It succeeds in evoking the roaring rush of a hurricane, the salty 
blast of a storm at sea, and a raging bonfire out in the woods at dawn. When the 
Ante-Chamber is functioning on full powers, it is as effective as a science-fiction 

teleportation device, and it can 

whisk away the listener to a , , 

savage world devoid of any i I / I I 

human life. Imagine.. .alone against llfl/ 1\ M J 

the elements, you turn your flinty 111 / ) Jw Si 

axe towards the unknown and I ' I V I 

set your hopes by a starlit sky. 1 f / f S'A/'‘\ 

However, by about the fifth or \ 1 ^ l y 

sixth 'Sector' of this particular 1 J /' Vf/ll'l 

virtual theme park ride, the I | /; A 

overpowering force of the sound I 1 if) i H 

has diminished somewhat, and I I 1 Vr 1 1 // njf \ 

the Ante-Chamber only delivers I I 'iWi'lli 'W \ 

a tasteful Ambient surrounding , u\'^|( j IrB I 

which is more fit for watching \ 1 I 

your goldfish as they dart back \ 1 HI iJllUX'vV' J J 

and forth across the tank. V \\ S' -s. 

Laminar is we suspect a solo turn ( V \A 1 I 

named Fred, working out of New *\ V. \\ 1 i)l S 

York in the USA; there's some \\\ \\\ ^ \U\ Wm Vfj 
allusion to his all-new acoustic \ \ \\ 'lfl y|! I 1 j if/ Jf ! j j 

working methods which enable u . I \ \ 1 j l{ | Jv/ f H i \S / 

him to magnify microscopic U <> 

sound effects to an extreme if! y CV '-/”/0 

degree. I would like to say that I / y / / ’ SS'l ( X J ' 'if Xj 

too have borne witness to ’the ! {) I // 1 fj j \ IMvfj/lj^W 

individual grains of pollen' of j } 

which the press release boasts, f7i(sn\ 1 ; '^S> 

but I'm still trying to locate those \S \{ ) 1 i / VwfA''' \ V \ I 

particles in amongst the general 1 I ^ ij^L 







Mnortham 

Many Rivers Move 
Along The Surface 
of The Magnet 

NETHERLANDS, ERS 12/02 LP (1999) 


In this early solo recording from 1 995- 1 996, Mnortham (ie Michael Northam) has barely 
intervened in the forces of nature other than to construct his home-made sound devices 
out of wire and have them installed with great care in a studio environment. This mini-LP 
documents some of the strange goings-on caused by 'the earth's magnetic blood flow' as 
it passes over and under the sculptures. With one side of extremely powerful 
monotonous humming and another side of mostly scraping and grinding noises similar to 
David Jackman's Organum workouts, you know you're in for a good time. Mnortham's 
Nagle Place studio is based in Seattle, from which vantage point he is able to physically 
repel the bodies of any remaining Nirvana sound-alike bands still dwelling in that town. 


using the eerie vibrating magnetic waves from his 
wiry works. At the very least, he should be able to 
cause permanent damage to their amplifier 
transistors so they won't ever tour again. If you like 
this, why not check out his 1997 CD The Stomach 
of The Sky on Staalplaat? And be sure to let me 
know if it's any good. 

ED PINSENT 

Hands To 

Egress / Tsii'edo'a'tl 
(The Wood That 
Sings) 

A USA. ANOMALOUS 

'[/ RECORDS GO 47 VINYL LP 

jf / (ND) 

( w j Cactus music rocks! This LP 

Y / / wins the silver cup for the most 

j A j unusual environmental recording 

J j dj . in this section, because it's 

* /If, / 1/ comprised of ’short songs played 
j M / Lf y / entirely on the remains of dead 
’ / Z/ A !/ / cactus found in the desert 

/ / / / Jrl / outside Tucson Arizona'. I freely 

MK j j ^ give my endorsement to anyone 

^ , i j t j I who tries to break away from 

f j j j j J P the shackles of recording- studio 

based music, so I naturally 

jAj-s/ (/ f P C Z ^ ^ \j welcome this adventure; anyone 

(- y ' S*" ) ?Ad fP who ) ourne y s ou t there into a 

yj Z? d ) C y (C_/ 0 National Park with his contact 

^ *- 7 (/n p O, microphones and makes a friend 

^ (J | r ° ^ t ^ ie cact ' ' s a sure 'fi re winner 

U in my book. What's more this LP 

L ^ is filled with splendid sounds and 

- — music, too. Well, there will be a 

few diehard s who beg to differ; 
although there are some actual 
primitive tunes near the end of 
- side two, it's mainly rather 

abstract listening. These musical 
portions, it turns out, are made 
from improvised violins and 
1 drum instruments constructed 

entirely out of dead cacti - 

including most memorably, an 

'acoustic theremin' made from a 
cactus stalk and a dowel. There's an immediate 
sense of ancient-ness that hits you with these basic 
tunes; I seem to hear giant cactus spines being 
plucked with as much solemnity as any 100 year-old 
Japanese kyoto player would muster. 

However, the remainder of the LP is delightfully 
atmospheric open-air material, richly evoked by the 
photographs hand -glued to the master bag sleeve 
(when did you last see a sky so vividly blue?) This 
environmental record, recorded in early 1996, is 


14 






The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


chiefly made up of totally non-musical scrapes, buffetings, whops and whaps, produced as 
the artist applies his percussive and scraping actions to whatever fallen giants of nature he 
might encounter on his travels. If this is starting to sound a bit like the exploits of Carlos 
Castaneda, or Captain Beefheart living in the Mojave, then I suspect you're on the right 
track. It's the music of isolated loners, filled with the fire and rugged pioneer spirit that 
we thought had all but vanished from the wild frontier. 

Hands To is Jeph Jerman, also known as the drummer in a free noise collective called 
Blowhole. His effort isn't that far away from that of Mnortham (see above), whom he 
namechecks as a good buddy on the liner notes. As to the non-musicalness of it, I for one 
am reminded of Lucas Abela's car-music record, Music To Drive By, which I keep 
wittering on about (see issue 6), a blindingly excellent soft-noise record which was 
created from pure urban serendipity. But in a way that record ended up saying something 
about decay, about modern urban death manifested through metal fatigue. This Egress 
record by contrast is an entirely life-affirming statement - even if the starring players, the 
cacti, are empty shells of their former selves - and it does it in a way that is genuinely 
environmentally friendly - and unpretentious. As to that I would never associate Mr 
Hands To with bonkers tree-worshipping types who perform inane mourning ceremonies 
at the death of one poor redwood at the hands of a zealous lumberjack. Rather, this 
record is nominated for my personal 'Green Globe' prize, for delivering a touching and 
lasting artistic statement about 
the state of the earth's 
topography today. 

ED PINSENT 

Animist Recording, PO Box 

15753, Seattle WA 98145, 

USA 

Jazzkammer 

Timex 

SWEDEN, RUNE 
GRAMMOFON RCD 2014 CD 
(1999) 

The environmental source 
recordings are just one 
ingredient in the casserole of this 
fine experimental compositional 
disc, but as it's their evocative 
use of street noises and firework 
sounds that have stayed with me 
for so long, I choose this 
environmental handle for the 
present time. John Hegre and 
Lasse Marhaug have pieced 
together an exhilarating and 
dynamic electro-acoustic 
noise-a-thon inside a punchy 
eight-track workout that's just 
perfect clocking in at around 40 
minutes, the old 'LP' length. It 
should enhance and furnish any 
drab living environment with its 
roaring, sizzling blasts and fizzes. 

Crackling records on a wind-up 
Victriola surrounded by a 
blizzard of snow. A nightmare 

street scene replete with dayglo 

plastic vest-wearing headhoppers, 

illegal drugs and flashes of House music from car stereo systems. And fireworks. The 
sheer delight in layering strange sounds has rarely sounded so fresh, as though the 
creators actually had fun - you all remember that? - as if they enjoyed creating and 
listening to their own experiments, rather than simply flinging together a rag-bag of 
incongruous and silly ill-fitting noises reclaimed from a dustbin outside Wardour Street. 
Yes, unlike many dingbats who insist on their 'experimental' credentials without serving 
any time to earn them, Jazzkammer exhibit a true dedication to their craft, yet never 
once overplay the fetishism-of-technology card. I'm assuming of course that these 
crunchy popcorn abstract noise backdrops have been generated using digital technology, 
but I'm usually wrong in these areas. The fifth-dimensional sound whirlpool tells stories of 
sorts; the narrative hints and itches in this work reflect the cinema/theatre backgrounds 
of both creators. John Hegre's 1 5-year career embraces sound design, music for theatre, 
improvised guitar playing and trip-hop music with Kaptein Kaliber. Lasse Marhaug used to 
play in Origami Replika, worked on soundtracks, and after 10 years of experimental noise 
releases on cassettes and records, now runs the ultra-trendoid label Jazzassin Records. 

One word - just in case any of the above has led you to expect a user-friendly beat-laden 
opus, check into another hotel - because this is genuine modern composition, folks! 

ED PINSENT 

www. runegrammofon. com 



Climax Golden Twins 

Climax Golden Twins 

USA, FIRE BREATHING TURTLE NO 
NUMBER CD (ND) 


A very odd collection of field recordings we 
suspect, although not wholly undoctored and with 
the odd bit of tweaking thrown in. It's a modern 
music concrete mix comprising real travelogue 
stuff, gathered from trips to exotic locations such as 
China, Mexico, Nepal, Israel and elsewhere. Most of 
it's presented pretty stark and in-the-raw, which 
means we get enchanting local music thrown in with 
the cries of street-urchins, local wildlife (mainly 
crickets and birds), atmospheric recordings from 
temples and hotels, and even a man snoring. In all a 
highly beguiling mix of spoken word, nature sounds, 
and music. The local music portions you understand 
are emphatically NOT documentary recordings - a 
World Music LP this ain't! - 
rather they are just one more 
contribution to the overall 
ambience. This makes the 
enterprise far more genuine 
somehow - an aural picture 
postcard from a foreign land, but 
enriched with a palpable sense of 
the alien-ness of foreign culture 
which comes over so strongly 
you can taste it like a mouthful 
of pungent exotic spice. 

This comes in a splendid white 
card sleeve stamped in foil with 
a Persian-type motif. Little is 
know of the 'Twins' except this 
is produced by Scott Colburn, 
the same guy who works with 
Sun City Girls. And they 
apparently share the same 
interest in immersing themselves 
in the weirdness of foreign 
countries; Rick Bishop of the 
Girls has recently written (in 
Halana magazine) an astonishing 
article compiling anecdotes from 
his frequent trips to the more 
remote parts of India. He is 
proud of his adventurous spirit 
which compels him to depart far 
away from the well-travelled 
tourist parts of foreign lands, and 
as a result his trips abroad beat 
yours and mine any day - he 
fetches back unforgettable 
images, extremely strange 
experiences and near-dangerous 
scrapes with the locals. And he's 
a better man because of it, no 
doubt. On one occasion he 
appears to have literally saved his own life through 
playing his guitar! 

ED PINSENT 


Various Artists 

Soundscapes be)for(e 2000 

NETHERLANDS, SSCD 002A-B 2 X CD 

This is a compilation of five prize-winning 
submissions for a music festival in Amsterdam of 
the same name, and despite its unprepossessing 
sleeve art (like something for a Playstation game 
you wouldn't even give to your hated 5 year-old 
nephew) and the dubious boast in the liner notes 
that 'new music is about to reveal its secrets', it's 
very good - a very approachable and useful set of 
new music. Five long tracks, spread over the 


15 




The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 



effectively a dripping tap record. You know, I 
should be careful what I write - it may come true. 

After that build-up I wish I could tell you how much 
I’m enjoying this release. I'm not. It doesn't quite 
live up to its claim to be 'minimalist trance music', 
because there's simply not enough happening to 
engage the interest at all. I sometimes have to 
wonder about this Aube fellow, who has built up 
quite a reputation mainly through sticking to his 
gimmick of only working at one sound-source per 
release. But all he's done here is take boring water 
sounds, put on bits of echo, make tape loops, and 
overdub everything. Net result - watery sounds 
resembling a malfunctioning beatbox. Never once 
does it transcend this method, or its source, to turn 
into a species of art - or even something like 
listenable music. 

I was about to tell you the wonderful package is 
at least a redeeming feature. In fact, it's as 
pretentious as the music on offer this time - a 
wraparound outsize cover printed on art paper, 
crediting Stefano Gentle with 'Original Photographs 
of The Water'. I mean, how precious can you get? 
This nonsense is allegedly 'limited' to 1000 copies - 
meaning there'll be 998 of the stupid things stuck in 
a warehouse for the next five years. Unless they 
suffer rain damage. Once your unsold stock gets 
waterlogged, pal, you'll come to understanding the 
real meaning of water. Well listeners, if you decide 
to buy this - don't play it at a time when you're 
bursting for a piss, whatever you do! 

ED PINSENT 



luxuriant territory of a double CD. Not exclusively field recordings, but this is what 
dominates - and there are some real favourites here, including farm animals, children 
singing, voices in exotic foreign languages, cars going by on a motorway, falling rain (my 
personal favourite! Can't seem to get enough of it!), ambient city noises, 


and what have you. Ever since I first heard the great Michael Prime 
recording and processing the sounds of an English village I've been a 
sucker for anyone who dares to frame the natural sounds of everyday 
life using the medium of the tape recorder. I'm not fully persuaded by 
that often-heard glib pronouncement that 'everything' is acceptable as 
music, because it takes real observational skills (if an ear can be said to 
be observant) to discover and select those sounds in the first place, and 
even more art is involved in editing them together to form statements as 
interesting and involving as these particular scapes. Yes, indeed. ..another 
noticeable advance is how much better is the technology available for 
doing it these days. When you hear those cars rushing by on the 
motorway, brother, you better jump out of the way as they speed past 
you from speaker to speaker. Pink Floyd's The Dirk Side of The Moon 
was never like this...Represented hereon - Eric La Casa, Sibylle Pomorin, 
Karel von Kleist, Robert lolini with Phillip Ma, and Francisco Lopez with 
a characteristically mind-expanding masterpiece - a mere 28 minute 
excerpt from a longer work called 'La Selva'. For more of his exceptional 
work, read the section on Very Special Nothing Music. 

ED PINSENT 



Aube 


Ricochetentrance 


ITALY, LUNAR LI 99904 CD (1999) 


Another release from the very prolific Akifume Nakajima, operating out 
of his Mecca Studio in Kyoto. This one's on an evironmental-ish theme, 
with all sounds originated from water. This arrived within days of 
considering that chance remark from Howard the sculptor, who in 1981 
dismissed my growing interest in avant-garde cinema by comparing that 
sort of dull, repetitive image-making to the sound of a dripping tap. (See 
the VSNM section for this same anecdote). So along comes this. 



16 


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THESE RECORDS. I 12 BROOK DRIVE. LONDON. SEI I 4TQ. ENGLAND 
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enquiries welcome 


17 





mmsmm 

laaiii 


The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


P<DPULAI 
CULTURE, S 
RELIGI@N 

EX, 

f 1 1 

People Like Us interview 


O People Like Us 
prefers to remain 
the Anonymous 
Artiste 

^ ♦ If ♦ If ♦ U 

This interview was conducted by e-mail in 
the first week of December 1999. 

EP = Ed Pinsent (The Sound Projector) 

PLU — People Like Us 

EP Despite its being deleted / managed to 
find a copy of your Lowest Common 
Dominator the other day. Very fine record. 

PLU Thank you. That was my first fuii iength 
release. From 1993. Was done on an Amiga 
500 computer with an £26 8-bit cartridge 
sampler that you would plug into the back of 
the computer keyboard! Not that I'm a 
techno-nerd or anything, but I think that's 
lo-fi! That's the album where I didn't put any 
titles for tracks because I was on an extreme 
about not wanting textual documentation for 
music that should speak without words. 

EP Also / see from the Musique Korrekt 
'newsletter' that you’re leaving the Staalplaat 
label > 

PLU Yes. I left a while back but had to see 
the remix project through with them. Am 
still with Soleilmoon though. Also Hot Air, 
am doing my new album with them, it's going 
to be out once the art work's done. 

EP An essay question, first... Your work 
reminds me of two of my favourite (visual) 
collage artists, John Heartfield and Max Ernst. 
So, are there any real parallels ? 

PLU Collage has always been my way of 
looking at the world and it was through 
photographic collage that I discovered 
working with video, film and then sound. It is 
the most important thing to me to be 
interpreted on as many levels as one can 
comprehend, and what better way than 
layering. 


EP Heartfield, / think, deployed quite 
shocking imagery (shocking at the time, at any 
rate) with a socio-political aim in mind, to 
rouse an apathetic populace from their 
torpor and wake up to the shocking truths 
around them. But then, he lived in pretty 
interesting times - and mass communications 
weren't quite as ubiquitous as they are now, 
so it was harder to get to the truth. 

PLU Yes, I'm aware of this work and find it 
very interesting. Of course I cannot fully 
comprehend what it must have been like to 
comment in his time, but understand that if 
you take imagery intended for one thing and 
then put it next to something eise that you 
are sometimes mixing ingredients for a 
cocktail bomb. This is my way of working 
too. The extreme reactions from a mass, or 
even a big room of people may be far beyond 
what the artist ever expected. This is 
because the artist is immersed deeply within 
the foundations of his/her wor k and 
communicating with the subject matter, 
whereas the outsider is 
introduced primarily by its 
crudest or most obvious 
elements within their 
sphere of understanding. 

And their understanding of 
any symbolism may come 
from sensationalist or 
twisted sources. So if you 
show most people a 
swastika they will not only 
say nazi, but they will say 
YOU are a nazi. If you 
show it to an occultist or 
Buddhist you'll get 
something completely 
different. But then if you 
show an occultist or 
Buddhist to a reactionary 
you'll once again get 
something different! First 
you label, then you pin it 
somewhere. So you may 
as well do what you like. 

EP Max Ernst was 
responsible for creating 
some astounding images in 
his collage books such as 
A Week of Kindness and 


The Hundred Headless Women . Here 
he took 1 9th century engravings which 
were potentially quite inert and 
innocent, yet through strong 
juxtapositions he made oneiric and 
sexually charged pictures. And there 
was a double-whammy effect to that, 
because he used imagery familiar to his 
own immediate generation, thus 
intending to unsettle the cosy 
belief-systems of Mum and Dad. For 
instance, consider your own use of 
easy-listening LPs. Aren't these like 
'Mum and Dad' music I And the found 
voices, especially from Radio 4 
-intended to be reassuring and cosy, 
you make them into something quite 
different. 

PLU Yes, very nice. What's the best 
way to provoke? With what we all 
have in common. Upbringing, popular 
culture, sex, religion. All are bigger 
than the individual and all are things we 
struggle with. Max Ernst knew the 
power of digging deeper into the hole 
of taboos, the unspoken. He knew that 
you have to seduce with the familiar in order 
to open people up. Otherwise you alienate 
people before you've got their foot in the 
door! That's my belief too. Although I don't 
altogether know what to do with people once 
they're IN the door I know that you have to 
find a common source of interest. Yes, my 
use of 'Mum and Dad' and the other familiar 
cosy things is definitely to do with seducing 
the listener enough to pay attention. It is also 
a bit of a Zen way of working. To attain the 
awe of the audience is half the battle. You 
can do it by confusion or provocation 
amongst other things. 

EP Another essay question, a bit more 
provocative. Tm not against you, but let's 
probe this area a bit.. .How effective can this 
form of subversion be; what is the intended 
audience; can it really work on them / For 
instance, ever since / was an art student 
onwards I've come across dozens of examples 
of my peers taking great delight in sneering at 
popular imagery of the past. I'm a big comics 



19 




The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


'I can buy into comfort and 
security but at the same time 
cannot feel I can trust such a 
thing because it makes you shut 
down. Then you're open wide.' 


fan, and have met loads of 
civilians who sneer at the 
creaky old adverts from the 
/ 950s. Actually some of 
them are downright weird! 

Isn't this just a kind of lazy 
smugness on our part ? The 
underlying implication is that 
'we ' somehow know better 
than 'they' did in the past, we 
are more emancipated than the previous 
generation. / feel sure this could translate into 
'People Like Us Hate People Like You'. It 
must be something you have thought about.... 

PLU I understand what you're saying. I see a 
certain arrogance in taking the mickey out of 
things and it's often a case of choosing easy 
targets for an easy audience. Or rather, it's 
art for the establishment. You even get 
established experimental! We are making 
work for our own kind, aren't we? Whether 
that be our own tiny circle of friends or our 
own massive generation. No one makes 
work for those that they think wouldn't 
understand or couldn't mirror unless they are 
trying to provoke a reaction. I believe that 
humour is one of the few areas of life where 
you should be allowed to do exactly what you 
want, nothing is sacred. That is maybe why it 
is so attractive to me. However, just because 
this is the case it doesn’t mean that I don't 
respect the content that I am manipulating. 
When I play with BBC voices and radio 
callers I am to an extent paying homage to 
the broadcast medium. I don't hate these 
people, I can't work 
with that which I 
don't feel warm with. 

I owe them a great 
deal for inspiring my 
work! Back to what 
the intended audience 
may be - so long as 
you feel that within 
yourself you're 
moving and 
experiencing new 
things and people 
seem to be translating 
that then the target 
audience would be 
any inquisitive person 
on the planet. 

For readers who 
don't know my work 
- my previous album 
(from 1 997) was 
called People Like Us 
Hate People Like You. 

With a name like 
People Like Us, and 
being someone who 
makes titles and music 
out of puns, it was 
inevitable! My 
material is very crude 
at times and yes, 
primitive. I wasn't 
really making a 
statement that I hate 
'people', I don't any 
more than I love 
them! If I was then I 
was sending myself up 
to a certain extent. I 
then named the 
Remix CD Hate 
People Like Us 
because it contains 


remixes of Hate People Like You and 
contains people like 'us'! Also, on a more 
personal and subconscious level it could be 
said that such if you engage in a duality 
situation of being part of any group of people, 
in any box, you eventually turn on your own 
kind and yourself. Having said that, I am an 
elitist. Or rather, I don't see that democracy 
makes good art. 

EP Another instance, again an art student 
thing, oh the number of people who used 
Ronald Reagan movie posters from his 
Hollywood past in order to make some 
'ironic' point about his being a war-mongering 
President! At least, that's how we young 
anti-Nudear weapons protesters liked to see 
it.. .simply pick a picture of Reagan dressed as 
a cowboy from some Western potboiler, 
stick a nuclear explosion behind it and voila! 
Instant social commentary...! think what / 
disliked here was the laziness, and 
commonplace use of a banal idea. (You're 
better than that though). 

PLU Yes, we all start with the most obvious 
thought but hopefully with a little persistence 


can start digging deeper for more 
obscure angles to take on any 
situation. Of course there is irony 
in my work, but a lot of the time I 
am a victim of my own irony, that 
is why I continue to work with 
such a thread because it moves, 
and where there is movement 
there are ideas. Many a time I've 
liked something because it is bad, 
because it lacks taste... because it makes me 
laugh, whatever. But any artist will say that 
once they have sat with that material for a 
week and ploughed over and through it, eaten 
it and regurgitated it, they no longer find the 
initial attraction appeals at all, let alone find it 
remotely hilarious. But that makes it all the 
more funny! No wonder not many artists 
work with humour! 

So you may well take Clinton holding a book 
and stick a woman on the cover with her tits 
out, and that's a start. But then the test is 
whether to leave it at that or immerse 
yourself in every possible angle of what you 
could do to it after that. Someone might find 
a crude statement banal, but it is only because 
it is such statements that get picked up on 
and used so many times. I find questions far 
more interesting than answers. I don't think I 
have any particular statement to make in my 
work. If I want to talk, I'll do interviews. The 
music should speak for itself, and besides, I'm 
a lousy tour guide. Most people would 
sooner go around the Ronald Reagan 
Roundabout har-harring forever than actually 
choosing a 
junction and 
buggering off. 

And art college is 
the most 
uninspiring place 
on earth to make 
art. I used to 
have to go home 
before I could do 
anything. 

EP How much 
tweaking do you 
really have to do 
to your found 
sources to 
achieve the 
desired effect! 

PLU I don't 
follow the same 
method for each 
piece. It might be 
easier to work 
that way, with a 
formula, but I do 
try to see every 
new piece as a 
blank page. 
Time-wise, the 
spoken word 
manipulations 
take the longest 
because the 
timing and editing 
has to be so 
precise for the 
slapstick to work. 
But for other 
pieces it is simply 
a case of finding 
two elements 



20 




The Sound 

that work - more like being a DJ than a 
composer. 

EP I recently snagged a copy of the first 
Negativ/and LP. For the cover they've dipped 
and pasted old adverts from a / 950s family 
magazine, with absolutely no intervention or 
collage whatsoever. In the context of the 
record, the pictures are satires of themselves 
already - without their having to call attention 
to it 

PLU Each cover was done by hand, each 
different. That is a good album. Very naive - 
that's a compliment by the way. Exploring 
rather than knowing. My first album was 
done meticulously too - 100 LPs - a split 
release with Abraxas. We got the artwork 
done on nice paper at the photocopy shop, 
when we got the labels done I had to cut all 
the holes out myself. But this was all because 
we had no idea how to do it any other way. 
Maybe that was part of the case with Mark 
Hosier and Co too. 

EP Do you value humour above shock or 
surrealism ! 

PLU I'd say that humour and shock are 
reactions to surrealism. I value the surrealist 
viewpoint above just about anything that I 
could possibly think of. 

EP Despite all the aural tripwires and 
booby-traps, there seems to be a real fun, 
user-friendly element to the work - and lots 
of lush surfaces. Though you get compared to 
John Oswald and Negativland a lot those guys 
seem quite severe in comparison. And they're 
didactic - 7'm telling you something, and it's 
for your own good, understand !' 

PLU I use techniques, found sound and 
humour, as do John Oswald and Negativland 
for sure. Shove me in that box. My work is 
more consistently idiotic and pointless. Of 
course I have strong opinions about copyright 
and materialistic/spiritual issues, but they 
aren't really the message. Hopefully when you 
look into my work you see what you are as 
much as what I am. I don't want to tell 
stories that are unambiguous because then 
the story would end there. Ambiguity is my 
goal, yes! Another thing - I am very British, 
and dare I say, female. Although I don't think 
being female makes much difference apart 
from the occasional bout of positive 
discrimination. A lot of people think that 
PLU is a bunch of blokes, which is great! 

EP Are the, erm, narrative ideas more 
important than the sound-world qualities f 

PLU The narrative is treated like music if 
possible. Rhythms and harmonies within the 
words are extended and played upon, 
although with more detail. You have to be 
more anal about the text! 

EP I LOVE the disorienting effects you 
create, and they're not just through sudden 
edits and juxtaposition. The sound makes me 
feel like I'm dreaming, the internal logic is 
delightfully inexplicable. 

PLU That's what I want. I want people to 
surf statically on my sounds, tripping over but 
never moving forward! I love to work with 
radio because it is a passive medium in a way. 
You just switch on and listen. You switch off 
and listen! It is very funny to play people my 
radio cut ups and watch their eyes glaze over 
as if they are listening to a normal 
unadulterated broadcast. And then their eyes 
light up when they suddenly hear all the 


Projector SE7ENTH 

words turn into the most confusing sentences 
and slurring and looping. It's such a strong 
medium, so hypnotic. I would like to do the 
same with TV at some point but TV is less 
subtle, and the ears are more sensitive than 
the eyes because you can't look away. 

EP The only record that comes dose in the 
same way is Revolutionary Pekinese Opera by 
Ground-Zero. 

PLU I'm listening to this now, and it's like live 
rebirthing, amazingly energetic and funny. I 
can only hope that I could be like this. Must 
say that I feel really in tune with the live feel 
of this recording and when listen to the 'live' 
(ie in my house but not post-edited) 
recordings that I've made I know there is a 
similar vitality. I think what he does is maybe 
more aggressive, but actually no. It's just got 
more screaming on it! 

EP / feel fairly sure in assuming that Otomo 
simply likes stringing strange sounds together, 
above any narrative content. You, on the 
other hand, seem a bit more involved with 
the content. Is that true? 

PLU I am always being pulled back and forth. 
One part of me wants to tell stories, have 
narrative, but the other more impulsive side 
says that all words are just sounds. Don Joyce 
said to me that one source is as good as the 
next, and I do under stand what he means. I 
love the mundane, the boring, morose. And 
when I hear all those screams on the 
Ground-Zero recording I know how he feels, 

I think. There is also a track on Organ 
Transplants by Stock, Hausen and Walkman 
where a really friendly tune is playing and 
they're adding short bursts of maniacal 
screaming. It's brilliant 

I love the way that dealing with 
uncomfortable material invokes movement - 
rebellion. I am inspired to change that which 
stifles me. But at the same time I appreciate 
the comfort that a late night radio broadcast 
brings and tune in myself, but partly because 
it is funny hearing people talking about things 
that really aren’t very interesting at all. See, 
this is what I mean about pushing and pulling 
all the time when I compose. One side wants 
to kill, the other side wants to nurture! I can 
buy into comfort and security but at the same 
time cannot fee! I can trust such a thing 
because it makes you shut down. Then you're 
open wide. 

EP How does your work differ when 
performed in a live context ? How do people 
react? Has anyone ever been shocked, 
provoked? 

PLU I used to DJ - although I felt that it was 
'live' because of the extent of the collage 
making that was taking place - and also I felt 
that just because you use a DJ's tools you may 
not fit into the DJ definition, whatever that 
may be. But ! grew tired of using record 
decks and CD players because I wanted to be 
presenting sounds that had been manipulated 
further by myself. Now I use CD-Rs and 
MiniDiscs of my own work and take apart my 
compositions and remix myself in a live 
situation. Video is a big part of my work too 
- I use found film footage transferred to video 
and edit it much in the way that I do with 
sound collage. The video provides that audio 
and visual accompaniment and sometimes 
dialogue for my performances. 

I'd say I've been shocked/provoked and so 
have the audiences. More so when I've DJ-ed 


issue 2000 

because there is more of an expectation that 
if you DJ that you are basically a slave to the 
audience and are answerable to their every 
whim. Disgusting! Certainly when I've DJ-ed 
people have queued up to complain and pick 
verbal fights with me, people have been 
thrown out for getting so aggressive. In turn I 
get provoked and just do more - feeling 
justified for annoying them! This is when I've 
played in the 'wrong' bars. It could be said 
that these are exactly the right places to play 
difficult music. These days I make sure 
people know I am not going to 'DJ'. I tell the 
organisers that I'm going to do a live set, and 
generally won't do it unless it's in a cinema or 
seated type of space, or that I know it is an 
art venue rather than techno (ie 
tech-no-notice) environment. I've had enough 
of that. 

But I'm stiil searching for the best way to 
work in a live situation. I love to play live 
with other people and have enjoyed many 
collaborations with my friends in America 
such as The Jet Black Hair People and 
Wobbly. Improvising with them has produced 
the most amazing moments and real intuitive 
working. There has been nothing like it. But 
at the same time there is a part of me that 
likes to work alone, but that's more of a 
studio thing. 

EP Hate People Like Us seems a very 
sympatico collaboration. Are a!! the remixers 
friends, people you've worked with? How 
long did it take to put together? Speaking of 
friends and collaborators, has your worked 
evolved in isolation, or are there any personal 
influences? 

PLU I chose the artists for the CD because I 
think remix projects are often rather boring 
and the same people get chosen all of the 
time. Most of the people that I chose are 
friends or people who have shown 
enthusiasm. I'm proud and flattered that this 
has come together, even though the project 
took two and a half years. It drove us mad. I 
started to wonder at times if the project was 
ever going to end, and in fact the 2 x CD was 
pressed but is not going to be repressed or 
sold by Staalplaat. However, the Soleilmoon 
I x CD is doing well and we've got lots of 
good publicity for it, am going to be Band of 
the Week in Alternative Press shortly, ha! 

My work is always a reflection of the people 
that I've seen and the places I've been to. But 
i generally am aione when i make the music. 
So it's both. 

EP 'Shitcake'- didn't realise until I saw the 
title that there was a turd on the birthday 
cake! Doesn 't this image sum up something 
about your work, the thrilling combination of 
beauty with ugliness, often in the same bite of 
the cake. Some of your droney loopings are 
as evocative and powerful as any record by 
say Am on Duul or Popol Vuh, yet you're 
frequently undercutting it with trash, vulgarity 
and weird foreign elements. 

PLU That’s funny, you blocked it out! A 
number of people didn't notice the natural 
additive at first, actually. So do you want to 
know if it's a real turd? Believe it or not I had 
a vision for that CD cover! In Spring 1998 I 
had an operation after breaking my leg. 

When I came round I was holding a plastic 
bag with my metal screws and a long pole in it 
and thought of a satin cushion with a shit on it 
surrounded by dry ice. Modified the idea 
slightly, bought the cake, decorated it and 


21 


The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


then acquired the aforementioned stool at 
great cost. 

You're spot on about the combination idea. 
Only with bright light can you see shadows. 

It is what lies on the periphery that appeals to 
me, I've never been interested in the main 
stream, even if it's good. To embrace the 
polarity and extremes of life may bring hope 
of understanding this so that it is not so 
extreme any more. But also, i'd say that the 
shit on a cake is a defiant two fingers up, just 
for the hell of it. 


The Thermos Explorer 

HOT AIR (CD/LP) JANUARY 2000 


CONTRIBUTIONS TO 
COMPILATIONS 


And The Wolves... 

COLD SPRING (AS THE PLEASE 
DISEASE) (LP) 1990* 


Antiphony 

ASH INTERNATIONAL ASH 3.4 (CD) 
1996 

The Answering Machine Solution 

STAALPLAAT STCD100 (CD) 1997* 

Subraum (#9) 

MAGAZINE AND 7" VINYL 1997 

The Sound Of Music 

STAALPLAAT LIMITED EDITION 
PROMO (3" CD) 1998 



wSjii 


fW 


Biundersonix / Special 
Mix (Split With TFU) 

KLEPTONES 2 (LP) 1997 * 


People Like Us And 
Sniper Piay The Three Djs 
Of The Apocaiypse (With 
Sniper) 

KLEPTONES 4 (LP) 1997* 


Hate People Like Us 

(Remix Of PLU By 23 Other 
Artists) 

SOLEiLMOON STAALPLAAT 
(1 & 2 CD) AUGUST 1999 


Lowest Common 
Dominator 

STAALPLAAT STCD079 (CD) 
1994* 


It s Terrorifici 

STAALPLAAT (DAT) 1994 


Lassie House 

STAALPLAAT STPLUPOOI 


Guide To Broadcasting 

STAALPLAAT STMDCD2 (3" 
CD) 1994* 


Beware The Whim Reaper 

STAALPLAAT STCD 101 (CD) 
1996* 


Jumbie Massive 

SOLEILMOON SOLV005 (LP) 
1996* 


File Under Easy / Sleazy 
Listening (Split With 
Sniper) 

KLEPTONES 1 (LP) 1 996* 


I'm So Bored With The USA 

DISKONO 002 (LP) 1998 


Stuffing V/Vm (7") 1998* 

RRR500 RRR (LP) 1998 


The Female Of The Species 

LAW & AUDER (2CD) 1999 


Sonderangebot 

STAALPLAAT/DISCORDIA 12505 (CD) 
1996* 

The Soundworks Exchange 2 

SOUND WORK RECORDINGS 
SWRCD2 (CD) 1996 

Occupied Territories 

STAALPLAAT STCD1 1 0 (CD1 1996* 


22 









The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


very special 


music 





An Introduction to VSNM 
by Ed Pinsent 

THE WORLD HAS QUICKLY become a fairly 
unbearable and threatening zone, no matter where 
you try and carve a living, buy a loaf of good 
bread, or even simply make it to the end of the 
street with all four limbs still intact. Science fiction 
movies, even the harshly dystopian ones like Toy 
Story 2, have never really gone far enough in their 
biting satire of the insanities and excesses of modern 
man. Reality far surpasses even the most 
nightmare-wracked imaginative visions, and even a 
latterday Jonathan Swift would be hard-pressed to 
account for the absurd follies around him, should he 
suddenly rematerialise in the middle of Leicester 
Square one Friday night. 

But it's not all gloom, doom, and a stale crumpet on your 
tea-tray. These strange days have seen the ascendancy of some 
brilliant composers - roughly located in the field of minimal, 
electro-acoustic music - whose interventions into our filthy globe, 
so overpacked with unnecessary NOISE - interventions, I say, of 
extremely quiet sound sources which are so imperceptible that 
we are able to enjoy, in great quantities, what I now refer to as 
Very Special Nothing Music, or VSNM. Here be records that are so 
MINIMAL they carry no name, no pictures, no handle. ..nobody 
created them, they just arrived one day like little alien spaceships 
landing from another world. ..they are impossible to find, to buy, 
or even to own. ..some are only rumoured to exist, others may 
only be the inventions of some japester independent record 
label. And at least one of the records described below turns you 
into a glass statue instantly, as soon as you listen to it - or even 
think about it. 


canvasses are the same: those layers of Titanium 
White daubed by a flat-ended hogshair brush can 
become a coloured tapestry as rich as Joseph's 
coat of long sleeves, if you'll only take the time to 
look. And take the time to be carried out of the art 
gallery on a stretcher, in a catatonic trance. 

In listening to 'Nothing' music, the analogy I 
sometimes fall back on is. ..breathing. Breathing air 
isn't exactly doing 'nothing', but maybe it can come 
pretty close. Especially if you work in the Hackney 
area. Now think of the difference between a lungfull 
of exhaust fumes on the street, and breathing in the 
frosty air on top of a mountain. Trying to inhale when 
the wind is blowing in your face. Try breathing 
underwater. Try breathing with your nose and mouth 
stopped up with gobbets of wax. Not so easy, is it? 
Now stop all these silly experiments, and make room 
in your life for the VERY SPECIAL NOTHING 
MUSIC. ..because it might just be the future, 
tomorrow's past available today! We can graft the 
ears of a Beethoven onto the body of a dog! 

□ 

Francisco Lopez 
Untitled 1993 

STAALPLAAT STCD037 CD (1999) 

Francisco Lopez 
Untitled 74 

USA, TABLE OF THE ELEMENTS TC 43 CD (1997) 

Francisco Lopez 

Untitled #91 

USA, EDITION. ..IV CD (1999) 


□ □□ 


Should you manage to separate your ears from the TV speaker 
and bring them instead into close contact with a piece of 
'VSNM 1 , the sheer emptiness that awaits you is quite exhilarating. 
Why, you could put a tape headcleaner into your deck and get 
more 'events' than playing a single one of these elusive silver 
demons, some of which are absolute black holes of nothingness. 
The interesting thing you'll find - if you managed to collect and 
listen to all of the examples I have gathered below - is the 
astounding range of VARIATION you can perceive within 
so-called nothingness. At first you may find the work dull, then 
impossibly dull; then you may find yourself on the other side of 
dullness, in a state of total stupefaction. (In saying this. I'm 
paraphrasing an art critic writing in support of the tedious 
minimal lines of that great gallery artist Sol Lewitt). I've stated 
before how I believe that, like insurance companies, not all blank 


Here are three separate releases from one of the more 
notorious ultra-minimal electronicists of our day. Untitled 
/ 993 is a great selection of live performances with such 
collaborators as Michael Northam, Steve Peters, Zan Hoffman 
and others. In live performance, Lopez may often wear a 
blindfold at the mixing desk, the better to focus his mind and 
direct his hearing into the solid pulsing drones that he looses 
into the world. The audience is often asked to join in and also 
wear a blindfold: more obstinate audience members may even 
be asked to wear a gag, get tied to their seat, or simply asked 
to leave. 

The listener, swathed in this constant rumbling, will be pushed 
into an interior landscape and the music will take its full effect. 
If you don't dare submit to such sensory-deprivation 
experiments in public, simply try this one at home on a crisp 


23 



The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


winter's morning and you'll enjoy a weird aeroplane ride through skies 
unknown and uncharted by the astronomers of the 1 6th century. The 
aerodrome of Lopez only admits planes with propeller engines to land - you'll 
understand the full meaning of this allusion when you purchase this. 

I should resist such avian associations however. Everything about the work of 
Lopez is calculated to 'blank out' most of our preconditioned, predetermined 
responses - he refuses titles for his works, and what little information supplied 
with available CD product is printed direct onto the disc, itself housed in a 
transparent slimline case. There's no denying Lopez is a heavy-duty serious 
explorer in this terraih - he's also a Professor of Biology at the University of 
Madrid, and has made numerous releases in this vein since the early 1980s, 
available on European labels Trente Oiseaux, Staalplaat, Geometrik records, 
Drone Records, Sedimental, Sonoris and Povertech. 

Untitled / 993 however can sound positively musical and over-cluttered 
compared to the Untitled 74 CD on TOTE, which could be seen as a more 
attractively 'empty' proposition. For the most part it really does comprise long 
passages of total silence. These are occasionally broken up by brief spells of 
sound events, of a sort. They're a bit hard to describe. Imagine going outside 
on a clear summery day. ..only to find the entire population of the world has 
been destroyed by a chemical warfare attack. Anything left alive out there? 
Think of modern civilisation stopped dead and the enormous gap it would 
leave on the world. All the buses, trains and automobiles ground to a halt. All 
the power generators no longer humming 


rigour. Instead, through sampler and computer, he creates 
sharp, distinct and discrete events, and organises a full range of 
sounds so abstracted and untraceable they might well be 
documentary recordings taken from the control panels and 
engine rooms of an entire fleet of invading flying saucers from 
planet Neptune. You've got deep rumblings like distant blue 
thunder from another galaxy approaching over the next 
county, right next to up-close studies of interesting objects 
such as screwtop jars or hand muscle-builders squeaking away 
in the grip of an android servant. Sighs, clicks, skipping CDs, 
and mechanical whirrs, all bedded down in a rich compost of 
silence - a serene silence which is the work's foundation. 
Meelkop knows of his work's passing resemblance to that of 
Bernard Gunter, but feels his work is 'more open, joyful and 
above all more audible'. Coming in from a painting background, 
Meelkop (also a member of Kapotte Muziek and Goem) bends 
modern music technology to suit his visual approaches. A great 
success. 

ED PINSENT 


CM Von Hausswolff 


away. All transistor radio batteries run 
down. The silence rushing in to fill this 
void - and that would have to be a pretty 
BIG silence - is what is captured here on 
this record, I would surmise. 

You may think listening to something like 
this is easy. It's anything but! To try and 
make any sense out of this record 
requires a fair bit of concentration. I've 
tried, and haven't got that far myself. 
Recently I tried it with a pair of 
headphones. Baffling to relate, but that 
long passage of silence at the beginning 
isn't silence at all. There's something going 
on there all right, but what is it? How is it 
possible to record and reproduce sounds 
so remote and tiny that you're only dimly 
aware of them? I only wish I lived in a 
quieter neighbourhood! Then I might be 
able to concentrate on just what's going 
down here. No use turning up the volume 
- that'll only cause more damage - these 
are fugitive spirits, like fairies of the air 
which will vanish if you draw too near to 
them. You recall Conan Doyle and his 
early attempts to photograph fairies in the 
late 1 9th century. Francisco Lopez, it 
would seem, has partially succeeded. 


Basic 

USA, TABLE OF THE ELEMENTS 


MOLYBDENUM TOE-CD-42 CD (1998) 


A four-track long player from this Swedish 
composer, who also happens to be a visual 
artist. If he had a hand in designing the 
package of this little beaut, he should take a 
bow for executing that, as well as the 
beautifully simple music. It's another clear 
CD case, like Francisco Lopez favours. Five 
slim inserts sandwiched together make up 
the cover, each printed on clear acetate. 
Hold them up to the light to see blurry 
half-tone photographs, and the titles - with 
enigmatic interpretations and cryptic clues - 
for each of the four pieces you're about to 
hear. This is the kind of stark typo and 
design excellence you normally find in 
artists' books gathering dust on the shelves 
of the Whitechapel art gallery... 


Strap yourself in for the four cuts of Basic , 
which are something of an endurance test 
for the lugs of the unprepared. The first, 
'Rotterdam Canaries', is a passage of 
unbearably high-pitched electronic 
twittering, as befits this very focused tribute 
to the little golden birdies. As 'Nothing' 


The third CD is the most imperceptible of 

these and it's the best one yet of the three! An hour-long silent CD with very 
very occasional irruptions of some sort. I hesitate to even call them irruptions, 
but they're identifiable (just) as the bits that aren't totally silent. These are 
sound events you don't hear so much as sense with your intuition - the same 
way you an detect a change in the weather, the vibration of a light breeze on 
the surface of the water, or a strange character entering the room. The 
concentration that's condensed into this 'silent' CD is so intense, that it really 
is exhausting to listen to it. 

After listening to this man Lopez I don't know what's going on in the world 
any more. 

ED PINSENT 

Edition... 1261 Brook Knoll PI, Lawrenceville, GA 30043, USA. 
fenton@stonehenge. ohr.gatech. edu. 

Roel Meelkop 

7 Perceptions 

I enjoy this one immensely, even though it's lonely and bleak-.real music for 
the eternal departure lounge of your mind...waiting for that elusively surreal 
De Chirico steam engine which will never arrive to take you back home. As 
'Nothing Music' goes, this is actually exceedingly eventful and never once 
descends to the level of ambient drone-murk. In fact, Meelkop studiously 
avoids the use of any musical tones, and does so with remarkable clarity and 


NETHERLANDS, STAALPLAAT STCD136 CD (1999) 


music goes, it's far from the standards of 
imperceptibility that Bernhard Gunter might 
demand, but it is exceedingly monotonous - in a quite brilliant 
way - and happy to refuse development. Near the end some 
real bird-song recordings emerge, hovering in the clear air like 
ghosts of their real source. For a far less successful treatment 
of bird song, see Peter Cusack's CD this issue. 

Second round - 'Kalingrad Cake', and if you're expecting a 
sweet reward from that confectioner's title, think again. This is 
an intensely irritating geiger-counter loop set against a single, 
attenuated high tone which keens and wobbles slightly in the 
background. Like all the pieces here, the utter simplicity is 
what strikes you - Carl Michael limits himself to two sounds 
wherever possible, insisting on that discipline, and yet still 
achieving a tremendous sense of depth in the music. It's like 
the magic of geometry in the hands of Renaissance 
mathematicians, creating an optical illusion. The composer 
challenges you to hear more than what is going on, yet the 
second you're on the edge of uncovering something, he finds a 
way of refusing it. 

Track three is 'Hamburg Fatigue', which is presumably a 
common syndrome amongst this composer's German fan-base 
of listeners (just kidding...). Again, a mere two tones are 
deployed in this long track - (I) a rising drone, pitched against 
(2) an exceptionally inert amplifier hum. Languid and sonorous, 
it's positively soothing after the previous two assaults on our 


24 




The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


nervous systems. Despite the mechanical nature of the machines' voices here, 
the hand of a human being is just about discernible in the way the throbbing 
tone varies from moment to moment - as though the good Von H were 
adjusting the pitch 'live'. As riveting as hip-hop gets, believe me. Still awake out 
there? Only one track to go... 

It’s called 'Stockholm Slumber', and even if the rest of this great recording isn't 
to your taste you should try and hear this one. It's an edgy, enervating mystery 
track! What the fuck is going on here? The most non-descript ambient 
recording available - could be taken from outside a lecture hall, because a 
muffled human voice is just about recognisable, but it's been stripped of 
anything but the most minimal vestiges of a vibration. This is set against a 
clunking, churning, shifting noise - a loop of furniture movers handling a large 
refrigerator, perhaps. And there's another high tone, which soon becomes 
agonising as it swoops from the air like some vicious wasp on the attack. Then 
there's the breathing - well, more like a muffled snort actually - a man asleep 
perhaps, in the arms of Morpheus like Magritte's Reckless Sleeper. In fact this 
track is the most dreamlike of the set - it's sure weird enough. There's enough 
of these fragments here to suggest that they're looped, and in the process 
made incredibly interesting - although they were boring as hell to start with. 
The magic of transformation. This could be the lesson behind the art of Von 
H, that he finds beauty and richness in the most inert and non-eventful 
sources. I'm reminded of a Mad magazine joke about Howard Hughes trying to 
prove he's still alive to his sceptical insurance brokers. He sends them a jar of 
his 'breath' - inviting them to compare it with his 'breath prints' of last year. 

Ultimately this record is unknowable, the structures by which it was built are 
incomprehensible. Which is what makes it so winning. A baffling masterpiece 
which I recommend. 

ED PINSENT 


SKuli Sverrisson and Anthony Burr 

Desist 

AUSTRIA, FIRE INC F-16 CD (1999) 

Another sterling example of nothingness, this one arrives in a striking yellow 
and black cover which makes a positive virtue of barcodes and hard-edged 
straight lines in the Tom Phillips style - it's a modern design classic by Hjalti 
Karlsson. Musically speaking, Desist is by far the most listenable of what's on 
offer in this section, because it eschews harsh tones, insufferably high-pitched 
frequencies, or excess of length - in short all the things that can make Nothing 
Music such an obstacle to listening pleasure. Desist won't bore the trousers 
off you, though it may lull you into a delightful half-asleep state where 
intriguing solutions to the day's problems will fall into your lap. One or two 
cuts may veer on the friendly side of 'Ambient music', to be sure, but it never 
gets as sickly as, say, a bowl of whey. The pieces works best when they deal 
with ringing high tones and amplifier hum, which is mainly what these fellows 
work with - 'organised into a slow-moving fabric', is their trademark - and if 
you choose to make such vectors of emptiness your raw material, you're 
definitely down in the Zero, with the other Masters of Zero. 

The very title Desist is perhaps an exhortation to the many shouting sinners 
abounding in this noisy world - is that mobile phone call on the bus really 
necessary, we might ask? Must you add your chunk of fatuity to the growing 
cloud of noise pollution? If not, desist. Skuli Sverrisson and Anthony Burr are a 
duo who have already tried their hands in the worlds of improv and free-jazz 


and have over time built up an impressive roster of sparring 
partners between them. Solo releases by these two abound, 
but most interesting is the news that Skuli has been working 
with Laurie Anderson, the New York performance and 
mixed-media artist, in her recent Moby-Dick project. 
Something tells he's just the man for the job.. .their wide range 
of musical abilities might just account for why this fine release 
has more confidence and body then your average pile of 
electronic goop squirted into the racks by some teenage goon 
operating out of a dreary bedsit. This is a pleasant series of 
episodes, each of which drifts in and floats around on the 
periphery of your consciousness, before drifting back into the 
Arctic circle again. The final track is beautifully serene, and 
barely perceptible at all; we're advised to play loud, but I kind 
of like it at a softer level too. The creators work hard to make 
it more like 'music' than some of the other more austere 
composers here; we're not simply left with the dry, unfinished 
tones and left to make the best of it. 

ED PINSENT 


□□□ □ 


Bernhard Gunter 

Details Agrandis 

USA, TABLE OF THE ELEMENTS TOE-CD-34 
SELENIUM CD (1998) 

To close this section, here's one by The Master. Although I 
only have this CD by Gunter it seems the man has already built 
up an impressive collection of work, which stands apart in the 
field of modern musique concrete by virtue of its extreme 
ultra-minimalism. This German composer could be the new 
Emperor of Very Special Nothing Music; he's already been 
placed (by one critic) in a line with Luc Ferarri and Bernard 
Parmegiani, which takes some doing. As the Metamkine 
catalogue points out, this is music that seems to take the white 
noise that emanates from our hi-fi loudspeakers as the starting 
point, but then proceeds to give it solid form, and locate it 
within a stated environment with great precision. But I'm not 
that keen to drift into the realms of conceptual justification for 
a record like this when I find it so darned compelling and 
interesting to listen to. Having thrown down the gauntlet and 
suggested that 'VSNM' is some kind of ultra-minimal white 
canvas of sound, I take it all back - this is a tiny, microscopic 
world simply crowded with detail. You've just got to listen - 
really hard - to find it. There are rhythms - and melodies of a 
sort, even somewhere the suggestion of narrative 
developments. Yes, I've come away more than once convinced 
I've heard more lyrics than there are in the entire songbook of 
Cole Porter, yet there's not a single word (spoken or sung) in 
evidence. An art tutor once sneered at my early interest in 
modernism - 'Yeah, I suppose if you listen to a dripping tap for 
long enough it starts to sound like music!' And I've out-stared 
not a few white canvasses in lonely art galleries in my day! 
Maybe I am living in a delusional state then, but it's a good 
place to be. At least one of the three works on this record 
show I’m in good company - 'Stone Circles' is dedicated to 
Richard Long, the conceptual 'walking' artist. I used to loathe 
his work and now I see him as one of the misunderstood 
greats of the 1980s, a man possessed on single-handedly 
remaking the vital connections between the earth and the soul. 
Gunter's been a sometime associate of another master of 
'silence', Rolf Wehowsky, since the 1980s when they met at a 
workshop in Koblenz. RLW states of his worthy constituent 
that Gunter is looking for the ultimate unambiguous statement 
of clarity. Judge for yourself whether he achieves this aim. ..look 
out for his debut work Un Peu de neige sake, or his Impossible 
Grey CO in the Cinema of the Ear mini-CD series. The 
present work originally appeared in 1994 and is offered again 
by our friends in America as a public service. 

ED PINSENT 


25 



Unknowing the Progressive: 

Rock as Non-Rock in the Late 1990s 

By Chris Atton 




The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


MY FIRST RECORD REVIEWS WERE WRITTEN AT AGE 
FOURTEEN, under the bedclothes by torchlight, one ear soaking up 
the crackly MW from the earpiece in the back of my Dansette. All the 
required elements for nostalgia are there: they are emblematic, 
perhaps unconvincing, but true enough. During that first year of 
listening to John Peel I would enter into my notebook an account of 
everything I heard on his show. In those days I was reviewing blind 
(well, deaf): I had no personal musical histories on which to build my 
tastes. Though these developed soon enough, for a few months I was 
hearing everything in its own, hermetic space; notions of influence, 
genre and collaboration came later. Yet somewhere resonances and 
preferences were being formed - and these quite quickly. I was 
repelled, I remember, by blues-based electric music. Little wonder 
that the music I took to straightaway had nary a blues lick in it: English 
progressive rock and the rock avant-garde of France (Gong, Magma) 
and Germany (Faust, Tangerine Dream). Of course, none us called 
them 'progressive' or 'avant-garde' - we didn't have names for them 
until we started reading the music papers and learning what we should 
call them. With naming comes a loss of innocence; we can never 
return to those formative moments where the music (of whatever 
genre) we love was first hard-wired into us. For some, though, there 
appears a perpetual striving after the music of their youth - not to hear 
it filtered and rewrought through a lifetime's other listening - but to 
hear it purely, nostalgically, to regain a lost time. 

The plethora of re-issues of progressive rock on CD speaks not simply 
to an acquisitiveness: such items appear part of a knowing attempt to 
commodify the old fans' memories of their youth. The micro-gatefolds 
of a recent Japanese series of progressive rock releases have been 
promoted by those good people at C&D Compact Disc Services of 
Dundee as: 

for 60s and 70s music fans who want to relive their musical past it] 
miniature, evoking memories of vinyl days gone by, whilst enjoying the 
crackle free sound of a CD, with the added thrill of a full colour, solid 
card album cover to drool over! 

We have also seen the arrival of groups such as Radio Massacre 
International and the Interstellar Concrete Mixers, dedicated to 
rehearsing the German synthesiser classics (especially Tangerine 
Dream post-Arem) of the 1970s on digital instruments (and the 
occasional Mellotron). Even Julian Cope, with his Rite 2, is at it. Such 
practices are understandable, if only for the security that nostalgia 
brings. Some might argue that they are 'rediscovering' the music of 
their past, though to relive the music under different commercial and 
cultural conditions (as a mature buyer of a 'contemporary' recording 
format) only weakly revives the notion of discovery. Stronger forms 
of discovery are closed off to those who insist on inhabiting the past 
exclusively, whether preferring to listen only to music of a certain 
period, or to give a hearing only to new music that conforms to the 
principles and characteristics of an historical genre. 

Perhaps the strongest form of discovery is that founded on naivete and 
ignorance; impossible to achieve after decades of listening, of course. 
There is a sublime joy in being ignorant of the trappings (commercial, 
cultural, historical, musicological) of a piece of music, to be able to 
hear it unequivocally and unmediated (as far as it can ever be) as one's 
own, personal, private, enclosed experience - as if the music only 
exists in order for you - the sole listener - to hear it. In such a virgin 
state of mind, perhaps better than any other time, the listener 'makes' 
the music. Recently I was able to get close to this 'unknowing' state, 
where I felt myself capable of 'making music' out of what I was hearing. 
Of course, I now come to music listening from a far more knowing 
perspective: a large record collection, a large library of theoretical, 
biographical and reference works, far too much time spent scouring 
second-hand record shops; my listening is so over-determined by such 
paraphernalia that it seemed impossible I would ever hear anything 
'new'. When our august editor sent me an intriguingly plump package 
of CDs for review, I found amongst them some that were 'new' - they 
inevitably set up resonances and remembrances of listening from times 
past, but they were, on first listening, for me entirely unknown - who 
the musicians were I knew not, what musical aesthetics they preferred 
I knew not; even the design values of the sleeves were opaque to me. 
For a few hours I was fourteen again. 

I was fourteen again firstly with Bass Communion. Impossible to put 
aside all preconceptions: does a triple-gatefolded double CD in a 
slipcase qualify this as 'progressive' on packaging alone? And even 
given that the second CD is a twenty-minute EP, a total running time 
of eighty minutes makes it a double album in my book. And that title 
does seem to have echoes of Steve Hillage's 'Salmon Song': sort of 
Whitley Streiber-meets-alien-fish concept album? (unless 'bass' is read 


as ... oh). These factors apart, the music didn't scream 'progressive' - 
point of fact, it didn't scream at all. Quite undemonstratively it took 
me along with it, unfolding in a dangerously unhurried manner, forcing 
one to inhabit a continuous present of musical stasis, though being 
aware that the music had changed and would change again. Memory 
and anticipation seemed suspended. My only previous experience of 
such a remarkable and powerful effect is with Morton Feldman's 
longer (sixty minutes plus) works. With Bass Communion, length 
appears irrelevant. The opening one-minute 'Advert' apart, tracks 
average ten minutes, the longest seventeen. Yet the 'continuous 
present effect' leaves one in no-time. They have no length: they begin, 
continue and end. Endings are very decisive on this record. The 
closing moments of ' 1 6 second swarm' finds a solo organ, shorn of its 
accompanying decelerating flute ensemble, pulling away from the 
skewed rhythmic static that has underlain the piece for much of its 
duration. The physical movement of the keys as the sustained organ 
tones shift are distinctly audible - as are the fingers as they leave the 
keyboard to conclude the piece. This may be ambient music to some, 
but it is palpable, human, physical - it is never less than engaging in its 
construction; no background atmospherics these. Impossible to put 
aside all memories. Florian Fricke is preparing to play his Moog solo in 
the first movement of Tangerine Dream's Zeit ('Birth of Liquid 
Pleiades') - he waits for the dramatic stasis of the organ to cease 
before he begins. It ceases. He begins. That's the end of ' 1 6 second 
swarm' - except instead of a Moog solo we have a silent gesture - a 
hand leaving a keyboard. 

Steven Wilson - the man behind Bass Communion - favours organ and 
synth throughout these pieces. His accomplice, one Theo Travis, 
supplies drones on flute and saxophones. But no mellifluous New Age 
nonsense, this: its continuous present prevents us luxuriating in the 
apparent lushness. Extenuated, desiccated electronica - beats 
constructed from radio interference, untraceable taps, a sonar blip - 
litter the ground over which these instruments range. No compulsion 
in the rhythm, always that stasis. 'A grapefruit in the world of park' 
finds Wilson squeezing out the richness from a Robert Fripp 
soundscape, leaving an intermittent, colloquy of distance. As with 
most of the music here, Wilson's processes engender a mournful 
poise, balanced between the present and a nostalgia for the 
unexperienced. Out of it can come the occasional alarm: is that really 
Keith Emerson's portentous fanfare from the ELP's reading of 
Ginastera's 'Toccata' I hear in 'Grammatic oil'? 

In the music of Bass Communion I hear progressive rock, but the 
Emerson motif is only a trivial part of that hearing. I am not insisting, 
as many do, that progressive rock must only adhere to the rules of the 
past. In his fine exploration of the genre ( The Music's All That 
Matters: A History of Progressive Rock, Quartet, 1997), Paul Stump 
cites an anonymous writer in the progressive rock fanzine The Organ 
asserting: 'The last thing you want a Progressive band to do is 
progress.' As Stump points out, there is much music being made today 
that might be considered progressive in its imaginative use of 
technology, its refusal to slavishly reproduce the blues legacy, its 
proponents' desire to break out of the restricted cultural formats of 
production and consumption. It might be idealistic, individualistic, it 
might fall flat on its face at times (just like any innovative project can); 
at least it is being attempted. Bass Communion is hardly rock, but in it 
I hear progressive values (in the best sense of the phrase). 

Not a day after writing the above, I read in the monthly Classic Rock 
(I know, I know...) that Steven Wilson is the brains behind Porcupine 
Tree and No-Man, bands keeping Progressive progressive in the 1990s 
(and, for that reason, no doubt less than popular with Progressive 
fans). No-Man's 'Flowermouth' (1994) is, I read, very highly 
thought-of. That doesn't surprise me, on the evidence of Bass 
Communion. 'Flowermouth' features Fripp and Mel Collins (another 
King Crimson connection). Listening in ignorance so often takes one 
back to one's formative years, it seems, even if inadvertently. Here I 
am already finding it impossible to hear innocently, already bringing my 
own listening experiences to bear and - coming up with an experience 
that does not seem far removed from the musicians' own listening 
histories. Perhaps this is the only way for an inveterate listener to be 
ignorant: to come to each new music not trying to deny one's own 
accumulated experience, rather being ignorant of the values, histories 
and intentions of the musicians. 

Would that the route back to one's own listening histories was always 
so revelatory. In the case of Joachim Roedelius, I merely ended up 
where I knew I'd be. I really didn't want to trust my map; I wanted to 
be taken on another mystery tour. Soaked in the music of 
Kluster/Cluster; Harmonia; Eno, Moebius and Roedelius, I hoped that 
his Selfportrait VII: Dem Wind voran ('ahead of the wind') on Captain 


27 


The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


Trip would go beyond the predictable 'New 
Age-with-a-few-rough-edges-but-not-so-many-that-you'd-notice' 
sub-sub-genre he's carved out for himself. But this forty-odd minute 
set of eight pretty, occasionally wheezy, tunes disappoints. Even our 
good friends at C&D Services seem to have lost patience with him, 
writing much of this later output off as 'the rather boring New Age 
stuff.' They describe it as 'crystalline,' which is precisely the word my 
partner used when she heard it. What she meant, though, was that it 
sounded just like the music that you'd hear in shops selling crystals. 

And it does. And there’s shedloads of it, by all accounts. Roedelius 
whistles on the last track, accompanying a horrible, sugary piano 
ballad. You really don't need to know any more. Given the label's 
Japanese provenance, it'll probably go for top price in the UK. Avoid, 
unless you like your heroes making the same record for decades on 
end. 

Moving swiftly on... They tell me that we must not confuse AMP with 
Amp. Fine. So Alien Registration Office is by AMP. Well, it's by 
A.M.P. Studio to be precise, this being the solo project of AMP's 
Richard Walker. These are the facts, though they will not interfere 
with my pristine listening one iota. Alien Registration Office can only 
be described as taking the listener on several excursions through 
realms simultaneously beautiful and restless. Curdled synth lines, rolls 
of indescence, contoured tones, neon pulses, tidal dissonance, heaving 
drum loops and the sound of a distant world spinning off it's axis! 
Sorry, those last two sentences were from the press release. These 
are the facts, though they will not interfere with my pristine listening 
one iota. Except that they make you want to hurl the thing out of the 
window, slipcase and all (what is it with slipcases, all of a sudden?). 

And 'indescence'? What's that? And can you get it in a roll? And did 
you spot the unnecessary apostrophe? And don't you just hate the 
overuse of the exclamation mark!? 

I continue: innocent of all histories of sound, particularly of A.M.P. 
Studio, possibly swayed by a temptation to construe said press release 
as evidence of musician's own values. Will this get in the way of 
'unknowing listening'? The album begins with cfattery drums 
supporting whispery, Vega-like vocals. Synth lines move in and out of 
the mix, to little purpose. This is redolent of the early 80s Dome 
releases (and didn't their first album contain a piece titled 
'Ampnoise'?). It's restless and urgent but seems uninterested in taking 
us anywhere. The further we proceed into the recordings the more I 
hear 'bedroom studio' - the flatly-recorded Spanish guitar of '32 paths 
virtually' and the piano of '23 1 gates round' are mere noodling - the 
latter has neither the jeu d'esprit of Epic Soundtrack's pianisms ('A 
Raincoat's Room' on the second Swell Maps album) nor the rigour of a 
Reich piano piece (not that I'd expect that). It sits embarrassed 
between the two, not sure of where to turn for inspiration. By the 
time I get to the thin junglism of 'some kind of...' and the birdsong 
accompanying what sounds like a stylophone playing a lame pentatonic 
non-melody ('bird blues'), I'd had enough. Perhaps hidden in the last 
fifteen minutes of this CD lies some of those rolls of indescence, or 
even a sound or two of a distant world spinning off its axis. If you buy 
this and found it to be so, do let me know. 

Still shuddering from memories of how shabby the experimental rock 
music of the 80s could be and still marvelling at how anyone would 
want to repeat it, I approached Illusion of Safety's 
sandpaper-wraparound sleeve with trepidation (as if this situ-inspired 
motif hasn't been done to death already, by such divers hands as the 
Durutti Column and the ICA - the brass paper fastener keeping the 
CD in place is a nice touch, though). I needn't have worried. This nth 
release in the 'Mort aux Vaches' series commissioned for a Dutch 
avant-garde radio project (natch) is the second in the series by Illusion 
of Safety (it says here), though this one is by a single Illusion person, 
Dan Burke, on improvised electronics. What these electronics are 
and where they come from I neither know nor care; neither do I have 
any sense of Burke's aesthetic preferences, they provenance or their 
purpose. I can construct them only through my own aesthetic 
preferences, which might make for misleading and vexatious nonsense, 
but that's all I can do. The six untitled pieces comprising the 50-odd 
minutes I hear as a single, continuous multi-movement composition, 
dominated by dense, slowly-developing blocks of non-referential 
sound, immune to subjective interpretation. Instrumental colours 
privilege a rich opaqueness in droning basses and shrill, whistling, 
purely-voiced upper registers. When these give way to other sounds 
the impact can be startling; track 2's railway oscillations move into 
more Ze/r-esque periodicities, slow and suspended yet utterly lacking 
in the drama and mystery that characterises much of the early 1970s 
German synthesiser corpus. And all the more remarkable for those 
absences. 


I hope you can forgive my nostalgic comparisons. These are not to 
place the music derivatively. If it has any connections with the 
Kosmische heritage industry it is in its fearless experimentation with 
electronic sounds in ways that suggest a very knowing appreciation of 
the genres informed by electronic music. At the same time it is quite 
prepared to upturn the conventions of those genres. It thus infuses 
them with an aesthetic that would alarm the Froese/Schulze recidivists 
- their heroes would never bust their genres so audaciously. Listen to 
the steel-ball-rolling-around-in-a-pan solo that bridges tracks 2 and 3, 
similarly the alarming edit between the varispeed burblings of 4 and 
the metallic breathings and surgings of 5. For those who don't want 
their electronic music to progress, Dan Burke's achievements are an 
affront. For the rest of us, he is to be lauded. This release can justly 
hold its head up in some of the finest electroacoustic company 
currently active (such as those on Jerome Noetinger's Metamkine 
label). 

And so to At Home with Alp. Memory isn't playing tricks here, I 
know: I can't find the reference, but I know that Michael Prime out of 
Morphogenesis. The idea is that you record the sounds of domestic 
machinery (toilets, kettles, washing machines, door handle, 
microwave), process them in unrevealed ways and release them. Here 
are 45 minutes of such tomfoolery by a former member of O Yuki 
Conjugate (for those who care about lineage), one Roger Horberry. 
Call me pedestrian, but after sticking my ear against my central heating 
boiler for a couple of minutes I found the sounds fascinatingly complex 
as they were, without feeling the strong urge to take them off for 
'processing' (which sounds a little, well, Brave New World, doesn't 
it?). What are we hearing here? How much is original and how much 
'processed'? Whilst I admire people who don't get out much, I feel 
that this is the ultimate home recording feat and as such should be 
strongly discouraged. Thomas Leer and Robert Rental warned in the 
sleevenotes to The Bridge that the extraneous sounds to be heard 
during the songs were those of their domestic appliances and were to 
be considered as part of the music. I always felt that was a cop-out. 

At Home with Alp makes a concept album out of such an observation. 
The floodgates are open - or should that be the cistern? It is 
impossible for me to hear this music separately from its recording 
history. However spectacular the forms it takes - and at times it does 
get fairly cosmic, believe me (especially where the fridge-freezer 
comes on like a UFO preparing for take-off) - the fact that it's all 
domestic appliances makes not for mystery, but for bathos. I'd have 
preferred not to know how it was made. Just as my formative 
listening showed me all those years ago, an ignorance of technical and 
cultural determinants can prove a joy. 

• * Works Reviewed # # » • 

Bass Communion, Bass Communion II 

HIDDEN ART HI-ART 4 2 X CD (1 999) 

Available by mail order from No-Man Mail Order, 76 Eade Road, 
Norwich, NR3 3EJ. www.nomansland.demon.co.uk/ 

Email: steven@nomansiand. demon, co. uk 

Joachim Roedelius, Selfportrait VII: Dem 
Wind voran 

JAPAN, CAPTAIN TRIP RECORDS CTCD-193 CD (1999) 

3-17-14 Minami-Koiwa, Edoga wa-Ku, Tokyo, Japan. 
www.md.xaxon.ne.jp/(cpttrip. Email: cpttrip@md.xaxon.ne.jp 

A.M.P. Studio, Alien Registration Office 

OCHRE RECORDS OCH 017LCD CD (2000) 

Ochre Records, PO Box 155, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire GL5I 
0YS. www.ochre.co.uk 

Illusion of Safety , Mort aux Vaches 

NETHERLANDS, STAALPLAAT [NO NUMBER, NO DATE] CD 

Distributed by These Records in the UK. 

Alp, At Home with Alp 

USA, SOLEILMOON S0L91CD CD (1999) 

Distributed by These Records in the UK. 


28 


The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


. DRONING 

O-N-E-S 

•0«0**0«0«*0«0«*0*0t«0t0t9 


Muslimgauze 

Azad 

NETHERLANDS, 
STAALPLAAT MUSLIMLIM 
022 CD (1999) 

A further 1 5 posthumous 
fragments from the sizeable 
backlog of unissued Muslimgauze 
tapes. These tracks have real 
force, but compared with earlier 
LP-long tracks I've heard, the 
Azad sketches sometimes fade 
abruptly, and seem a tad 
inconsequential to these ears. 
Nonetheless I relish this 
particular batch simply for the 
repeated use of bird calls, 
especially the one or two tracks 
which feature peacocks. I could 
do with a whole CD of that 
haunting peacock cry actually, 
but this'll do for now - Bryn 
Jones has made an exceptionally 
powerful use of that avian loop, 
making this a truly delectable 
piece of exotica as sweet as a 
perfumed box of Turkish Delight. 
Other high-pitched bird cries 
likewise rise to the fore of the 
mix, giving the overpowering 
drum loops something truly 
piercing to contend with. Those 
bass-heavy drum rattles, when 
played loud, start to acquire 
quite a fearsome character, as do 
the other foreign sounds (some 
are Eastern music bites) acquired 
perhaps from shortwave radio 
samples. Top marks also to the 
exceptional packaging for this 
one - cutouts, embossed jewel 
case front and back, 
and a real Arabian 
banknote slipped into 
the box...as I'm wholly 
ignorant of foreign 
affairs, and a 
latecomer to the 
Muslimgauze universe, 
it's virtually impossible 
for me to make any 
cogent remark on the 
dialectic behind all this 
obsession with the 
Middle East, and my 
wooliy mentalising is 
tending to fantasise it 
away in a sort of 
Arabian Nights / 

Tintin in the Land of 
Black Goid 
pastiche.. .raced with 
titles like 'Benzoin 
incense Vendor', 

'Scientist of India 
Garden’, and 


'T urmeric Sahara Gaze'. So, for a 
more informed view, read my 
erstwhile colleague War Arrow 
below. 

ED PINSENT 


Muslimgauze 

Hand of Fatima 

USA, SOLEILMOON 
RECORDINGS SOL SO CD 
(1999) 

Muslimgauze 

Fakir Sind 

USA, SOLEILMOON 
RECORDINGS SOL 80 CD 
(1999) 

As you may know, Bryn Jones is 
sadly no 'longer with us. I found 
the news of his untimely demise 
more saddening than is usual in 
such cases. Okay, I didn’t know 
him from Adam (not that I know 
anyone called Adam in the first 
place) but I remember his name 
cropping up on flyers and in 
fanzines from way back when he 
started out as E.G. Oblique 
Graphique, so for me, he was 
one of the boys, my generation, 
that kind of thing. I know folks 
who knew him, and he did some 
great records. 

Towards the end he must've 
been as good as living in the 
studio, shitting out one album 
after another , and pr obably in 
real time. No label could have 
hoped to keep pace with such a 


perversely prolific 
output. Now that his 
body of work has 
become unexpectedly 
finite, Soleilmoon are 
starting to catch up, 
releasing a back 
catalogue of 
posthumous recordings 
in an undertaking that is 
surely on par with the 
construction of the 
pyramids. Among these 
is a boxed set of nine CDs. What 
is most surprising is that even 
this isn't particularly surprising. 

I'll bet you couldn't move for 
pizza boxes in that studio 
towards the end. So you’ve got 
to wonder what the last few 


hundred Muslimgauze albums 
were like. Andy Warhol did 
some really long films. And they 
were shit. 

The music of Muslimgauze is 
heavily rhythmic, so the playing 
and recording of the percussion 
is, as one would hope, absolutely 
spot on. I'm informed that Mr 
Jones never used samplers, that is 


to say it was all done with tape 
manipulation. I actually find this 
very hard to believe, so if true, 
then his skill in this area was 
unsurpassed. To say the 
percussion is mesmeric or 
hypnotic is only scratching the 
surface, for despite the sparsity 
of sound sources, there seems to 
be a lot more going on than can 
easily be described in such terms. 
The drums dominate a backdrop 
of bird calls, market sounds, 
Arabic instruments and so on, 
creating a distinctively Islamic 
ambience. This much you 
probably know. The extraneous 
aural condiments have evolved 
over time, but the emotional 
stratum has remained unchanged 


since Hunting Out With An Ariel 
Eye ( 1 984?), Haji ( 1 986) and The 
Rape Of Palestine (1988) - all of 
which really blow yer nadgers 
off. The nuts and bolts of the 
Muslimgauze sound once varied 
considerably from album to 
album whilst consistently 
projecting the same intensity of 
purpose. It's the usual canvas and 




29 




The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


the usual picture but at least he 
would swap brushes or try a 
different shade of brown every 
once in a while. Fakir Sind mi 
Hand OfFadma are virtually 
indistinguishable from one 
another. Musically it's business as 
usual, so surely, you might think, 
it's all good. 

The trouble is that one gets the 
feeling Jonesy, having committed 
himself to doing a new album 
every two hours, may have 
suffered from pangs of guilt at the 
sheer repetitive nature of his 
work. To this end he has 
apparently taken to monkeying 
around with his tried and tested 
formula, screwing up the sound 
quality in places, and every so 
often stopping the tape dead to 
let a drum sound die away in the 
echo. This would be okay once 
or twice, but he keeps doing it. It 
sounds like the CD is knackered, 
or the leads are shorting out on 
your speakers, or at worst Steve 
Stapleton's got hold of the 
master tapes. Were I a soppy 
bastard I might come up with 
some old cobblers about 
'drawing attention to the failings 
of the medium' or 'defying 
expectations by emphasising 
flaws and cock ups', but no. It 
just gets irritating. Muslimgauze 
were surely never intended to be 
relaxing, but I doubt they were 
ever trying to be wilfully abrasive 
either. 

If, as Mr Jones claimed - despite 
statements made to the contrary 
presumably in order to avoid 
getting into arguments - 
Muslimgauze were entirely 
political, then he did himself a 
disservice with these two. Titles 
like 'Why No Dogs in 
Nizamabad' and 'Let's Have More 
Dagga, Begum' hint at a certain 
desperation creeping in. What 
next! 'Carry On Follow That 
Camel'? 'Sheik Rattle And Roll'? 
Had his interests been focused 
on Inuit rather than Middle 
Eastern culture would these 
albums have included tracks 
called 'Let's Rub Noses' and 'No 
More Blubber For Me, Thanks - 
I'm Stuffed'? Bryn Jones has 
produced more than one 
masterpiece over the years. Let 
us remember him for them, and 
not for these. 

WAR ARROW 

Anna Planeta 

Anna Planeta 

BETLEY WELCOMES 
CAREFUL DRIVERS 
BWCD007 2 X CD (1999) 

Quite superb double-disc helping 
of low-key, lo-fi, anonymous and 
mysterious droneworks from the 
anonymous and mysterious Anna 
Planeta phenomenon. If The Blair 


Witch Project movie deserved a 
musical soundtrack, I would vote 
this as a prime candidate; you've 
rarely heard music that conveys 
such a sense of isolation, of being 
almost completely sealed off 
from external stimulation and 
dwelling amidst a strange cult or 
coven, all natural feeling 
repressed until you can feel your 
own brain stewing in a cauldron 
of internalised emotions. To 
facilitate your entry into such a 
world, by all means spin your 
way into orbit of the heavy 
gravitational pull of Anna Planeta. 
The circumstances of its creation 
are an index to the palpable 


sense of weird, dark loneliness it 
emanates; over two years, a 
group of maladjusts occupied a 
deserted Catholic schoolhouse in 
a remote-ish part of the country. 
Who were these mystery 
people? Squatters? Crusties? 
Anarchists? Drug users? Or just 
plain outcasts? No matter. 
Without electricity, and partly 
under the wing of Phil Todd 
acting as a species of instigator / 
producer, the natural sounds of 
the building itself were used and 
played against whatever 
performative makeshift tools 
might come to hand; some 
acoustic musical instruments, a 
battery-operated toy organ, a 
violin, a triangle, vying with 
creaking chairs and floorboards, 
and other 'sonic events 
generated by the buildings 
themselves'. Somebody started 
the tape recorder running long 
after everyone had got going, so 
these long tracks kick off at a 
point that's already advanced well 
beyond trance-state and they 
suck the listener into a vortex of 
near-stasis, the sound of 'idle and 


troubled youths' who have 
somehow stumbled onto the 
harmony of the spheres and 
instinctively know not to vary by 
one iota that rare bliss-state, 
balancing on that sweet pinnacle 
of ecstasy for long, testing 
sessions. The murky facts behind 
this story are weird enough to 
already have passed into urban 
myth - kind of like our very own 
Amon Diiul commune story - but 
what's impressive is that, without 
even trying, this project manages 
to create effects that more 
high-minded establishment 
avant-garde figures like The 
Dream Syndicates or the Philip 


Glass Ensembles of this world 
have sweated blood over. It's 
true - just put the right tools in 
the right hands at the right time, 
and you can create magic almost 
anywhere. 'The sacred meets the 
very profane,' states Todd, 
clutching at images to describe 
the anomalies of the situation. 
Sadly limited to 400 copies due 
to damage at the CD pressing 
plant.. .grab one while you can 
and expose for yourself the 
hollowness of The Blair Witch 
Project 

ED PINSENT 

7 Woodside, Madeley, Crewe, 
Cheshire CW3 9BA 
ptodd@tesco. net 

Shifts 

Pangaea 

ELSIE + JACK RECORDINGS 
#002 CD (1998) 

Absolutely superb 44 minute 
shifting drone-work by a past 
master of the genre, Frans de 
Waard - the Dutch artist behind 
the Staalplaat business, who has 


also recorded under many guises 
and with many others of his ilk - 
Kapotte Muziek and Beequeen 
being but two names to conjure 
with. On this, his debut 
full-length recording, he's created 
a massive guitar-derived exercise 
from 1 997 and he uses the one 
instrument with a four-track and 
the 'PT Device'. Starting out with 
a series of simple and 
monotonous strums, he 
overdubs and echoes these until 
the drone gains momentum - in 
the framework of a very 
single-minded and intensive 
exploration. Yes, the 
thrill-seekers among you might 
get bored - but wait patiently 
until this shimmering jewel of 
sound mutates into that 
marvellous unified set of shifting 
tones, with no real specific note 
or colour, or discernible centre 
of gravity. A magnificent grindy 
drone proceeds to hang in the air 
and shimmer like a golden 
Christmas tree. Finally, it's as 
mighty and inspirational a work 
as any managed by the American 
'Holy Minimalists' (some of 
whom get far more kudos than 
they deserve), and fully meets the 
criteria of utter simplicity in its 
compositional and practical 
method of realisation - and 
without claiming any high ground, 
or ever once lapsing into 
pretentiousness. The sleeve art 
depicting strata and rock 
formations refers back to the 
'lost world' of Pangaea, the 
ancient name given to the whole 
earth before it separated apart 
and drifted into the continents. 
Needless to say the epic-scaled 
dynamics and tectological 
energies involved in this 
plate-shifting event are more 
than echoed in the power of this 
music! Very very effective indeed 
- leave it on repeat play all night, 
and you will dream of Heaven. 

ED PINSENT 

Rapoon 

Navigating By 
Colour 

USA, SOLEILMOON 
RECORDINGS SOL 71 CD 
(1999) 

In homage perhaps to Brian Eno's 
Before and After Science LP, 
Rapoon's latest edition is a CD 
issued with a fine set of 1 2 
postcards of Robin Storey's 
alluring paintings, which look 
like half-obfuscated magic runes 
and ancient markings clashing 
with abstract blocks of colour. 

His painterly background is 
reflected in the music's titles (and 
the music really) when he 
'navigates by colour' and names 
his paintbox for us - 'Prussian', 
'Cerulean', 'Red Hemisphere', 



30 


The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


'Sienna'...l always recommend 
Robin Storey's solo recordings to 
anyone, but (in common with 
quite a few on the Soleilmoon / 
Staalplaat roster) he tends to 
keep making the same record 
every year. It's not a bad record 
to repeat - each track is beautiful 
and haunting, but the only 
changes he rings this time are 
occasionally adding mechanical 
drumbeats to the mix. On 
occasion these are filtered along 
with the rest of the treated 
samples, so that everything 
blends into the misty haze. When 
Rapoon music works, it's 
genuinely moving, sonorous 
echoing passages that suggest 
a great faded splendour of past 
civilisations, and indeed a 
sense of religious awe. This 
music can aiso sound 
incredibly lonely; you become 
a lone listener in a bleak and 
foggy landscape, and start to 
notice the lack of human 
interaction in the 
pre-programmed piaying, 
which - although elegant and 
expertly done - sometimes 
reinforces the fact that one 
person alone made the music. 

ED PINSENT 


Jonathan 

Coleciough 

Windlass 

AUSTRIA, KORM 
PLASTICS 

INTRODUCTIONARY 
PAPERBACKS KIP 016 CD 
(1999) 

An excellent monotonal 
exploration into unexplored 
ranges of strange darkness and 
colour-blending from this 
one-man hurdy-gurdy show 
and former associate of the 
very special 'Mr Organum' 
David Jackman. An episodic 
trance journey is calling you, 
stage after stage in a wooden 
trireme, rowing the 
sea-bobbing mariner through 
dark swells of oily ocean, past 
threatening islands of strange 
old birds, the cave of the 
Cyclops and indeed the Sirens 
themselves, only to come 
home to roost in the port of a 
blissful island not unlike the 
land of the Lotus eaters. Yes, 
it's like Poseidon rocking you 
with storms and earthquakes 
one moment and then arriving 
at a safe haven next 
day. ..having bombarded you 
with some agonizing shriii 
tones and menacing blasts, this 
music rewards you with a 
calming and serene series of 
blissful harmonic overtones at 
the end. 

Allegedly all the sounds heard 
here were generated using no 


more or less than an actual 
windlass, which is part of the 
mechanism used in operating the 
locks on canals. Personally I don't 
believe one word of that - not 
even the part about 'canals' really 
existing, because I often suspect 
they're just a manufactured 
fiction invented to sell us the idea 
of 'the idyllic countryside' on 
some theme park basis. Part of 
an offprint Staalplaat mid-price 
label and comes with a 
vomity- inducing sleeve ripped 
from the pages of a ghastly 
pre-war colour cookbook. 

ED PINSENT 


Neil Campbell 

String quartets, 
loops, garden talk 

PRIVATE PRESS CDR (1999) 

Ashtray 

Navigations 

Those are Pearls 
that were his Eyes 

USA, SOLIPSISM 03 CD 
(1999) 

Two very good new independent 
CDs from our own UK heroes of 
home-made avant droneworthy 


explorations. This is the third 
thing I've heard from Neil 
Campbell and I confess I'm 
becoming addicted to his brand 
of no-nonsense, sumptuously 
excessive and rich mono-noise. 
There's a great tape called The 
Singing Pubis, an almighty racket 
which he recorded in 1998 with 
just acoustic guitar and cymbal, 
an artefact 'packaged' by his own 
fair mitts through securing it to a 
piece of corrugated card with a 
piece of garden wire. This tape's 
'junk' aesthetic is a ploy to 
disguise its aberrant beauty in a 
world already filled with too 



“Turn that stupid stuff off!” 


31 


The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


much junk. The splendid LP 
These Premises are No Longer 
Bugged \ I mention again (see 
issue 5) because we omitted to 
mention it was released by 
Patrick Marley's label Giardia 
Recordings from PO Box 2571, 
Minneapolis, MN 55402 USA. 

String quartets, loops, garden 
talk , Campbell’s new ' 

Recordable CD, comprises 1 3 
haunting episodes you're not 
likely to forget in a hurry. The 
programme alternates two 
strands of musical activity. 

There are brief, faintly hilarious 
pieces of speeded-up records 
being sabotaged by Neil's 
intermittent electronic belches 
- a trick familiar from The 
Mothers of Invention early 
records, which should endear 
many a segment of the 
audience. These are followed 
immediately by the sort of 
deeply resonant, scorching 
drone-fests which we 
'normally' associate with the 
guy. These massive drones are 
effected using violins, guitars 
and scraped percussion, all 
recorded in such ways as to 
massively distort the natural 
sounds and generate far too 
many conflicting frequencies, 
all at once. Oh, that's grand! 

He occasionally creates effects 
on a par with the important 
Faust and Tony Conrad Dream 
Syndicate LP, though he'd 
personally prefer to associate 
this kind of meat-eating, ballsy 
feedback noise with the likes of 
Black Sabbath and Spacemen 3. 
It's all the more impressive 
when you figure he's doing it 
solo and with ten times the 
sense of humour of any dingbat 
rock combo or (more to the 
point) any pretentious concept 
artist turned musician. 

Humour, is no doubt, as 
important to Campbell as the 
music - and the same goes for 
Phil Todd, the Ashtray 
Navigations mastermind. Well, I 
say humour - at least, a sense of 
perspective that prevents them 
from taking themselves too 
seriously, with no resulting 
damage to the music. The two 
are old friends. Campbell was 
interviewed by Phil Todd in 
Opprobrium magazine and stated 
baldly '...what I am doing comes 
from very basic rock and pop... I 
can sit and enjoy John Cage and 
Tony Conrad [but] i didn't know 
what the "avant-garde" was until I 
reached a certain age. It's just 
about having fun and having a 
good time.' And again, insisting 
on his feedback droney music's 
position within the rock music 
continuum, 'My stuff is just 
Post-Velvets rock music. It's just 
that fuckin' rock people can't 
notice it as rock music.' Besides 
founding The A-Band and 


exhibiting a healthy interest in 
the cheap bulk production of 
recorded musical product by any 
means possible through a 
network of international friendly 
weirdoes, Paisley-born Campbell 
is associate to fellow exiles Julian 


Bradley, and Richard Youngs 
(who is involved on at ieast one 
track on String quartets, loops, 
garden talk) - Youngs being 
another hero of self-produced 
art LPs, one of which (Advent) 
has already warranted reissuing 
on CD. 

Ashtray Navigations' latest comes 
packaged in a luxurious 
full-colour inlay of a Buddhist 
garden, and it's a single 48 minute 
piece recorded in Easter 1998. 
Like Campbell, Phil Todd's 
preference is to attempt to 
combine as many possible 
conflicting frequencies all at 
once. But where Campbell starts 
recording right in the middle of 
the maelstrom, Todd builds up to 
it gradually, adding layer after 
layer of translucent accretions to 
the total tableau like a 
watercolour artist. Here, on his 
Shakespearean Tempest- inspired 


odyssey into the ocean depths, 
he deploys his familiar attenuated 
guitar sounds and skating rink 
organ in sparing washes of limpid 
tone. The sea-nymphs call us and 
enchant the incautious mariner, 
much like the sirens... before you 


know where you are you're 
surrounded by an astonishingly 
dense, heavy mass of sounds, 
quite literally drowning in a thick 
fug of overdubs. Yet it never 
seems chaotic, or unbearable - as 
always, Todd knows how to 
master this mass of power, as 
surely as Neptune rules the 
waves with his trident. 

ED PINSENT 

Solipsism, 26 S Main #277, 
Concord, NH 03301, USA 

Vibracathedral 

Orchestra 

Vibracathedral 

Orchestra 

NO LABEL.NO NUMBER 10" 
VINYL LP (1999) 

Neil Campbell's current venture, 
the Vibracathedral Orchestra, is 


now a quintet - but this early 10" 
record documents two 
performances from 1 998 when 
they were 'jamming good' as two 
separate trios, with Michael 
Flowers acting as shared 
member. On this gorgeous 
artefact, housed in a 
two-colour screenprinted 
sleeve, we have two 
sumptuous long tracks of 
superlative airy drone music 
that can't fail to raise the 
most torpid of spirits. 'Falling 
Free You And Me' is 
Campbell playing with 
Flowers and Julian Bradley, 
and the intense tapestry of 
sound evokes the feeling of a 
futuristic Gamelan ensemble 
fed on the most intense of 
psychedelic drugs and already 
halfway on their trip to 
Nirvana by the time the 
needle connects with the 
black stuff...as on many a Neil 
Campbell project, the 
recording has been edited 
just to present you with the 
most exciting and intense 
moment, so no long wait for 
the listener while the band 
warms up. The flipside 'Filling 
Sacks With Coloured Scraps' 
is pure eastern psychedelia, 
and is slightly busier than the 
noisy but serene drone of its 
companion - featuring 
Flowers with Adam 
Davenport and Bridget 
Hayden. These three lock 
into a winning sound, 
brushing and bowing stringed 
instruments which might be 
sitars or treated guitars, with 
distorted tambourine-like 
percussion, and the players 
are so stuck into the 
righteous jamming groove 
that it's a genuine shame 
when the grooves run out. 
Record collectors gladly pay 
£40 and up for rare LP 
examples of eastern jamming 
recorded in the 1 960s, featuring 
either genuine Indian sitar music 
but wrapped in a psychedelic 
sleeve, or worse yet rock 
musicians trying to emulate the 
same thing. Either way you can 
bet that those overpriced 
monsters don't sound anything as 
beautiful as this! 

ED PINSENT 

Available from Neil Campbell, 
16 Hirst Street, Mirfield, West 
Yorkshire WFI4 8NS, United 
Kingdom 

Priced £5 in the UK, £7 rest of 
world 

Other Vibracathedral 
Orchestra recordings available 
from the same address - Lino 
Hi CD on Giardia Records, 
and Hollin CD-R 

• 0 * 0**09090 

•<yo9<y 


roll up! roll up! one night only! 

vibracathedral orchestra 

billowing cloud sound - one mind no mind ensemble action 

klunk 

vector regulars - abstract ever-expanding collage flicker 

plus films, projections, perfumes, draperies - 

convivial alcoholic vibe 

downstairs 
at the george 
hotel, great 
george st, 
leeds 

at 8.30pm on 
Saturday 
12 february 
2000 

one pound 
admission 



32 



The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 



Rhodri Davies 
/ John Bisset 
Malthouse 

2:13 MUSIC 2:13CD040 
CD (1999) 

One of the more unusual 
improv recordings to ha/e 
reached us since we began 
this venture, Malthouse - 
or Odyngaich in its Welsh 
title - is a series of harp 
and guitar duets of a highly 
singular strangeness. 

Davies, fresh from his 
recent successful live 
performances with the string trio 
1ST, embarks on this studio 
project with a real sense of 
adventure, and treats the harp as 
though it's one of the strangest 
inventions on God's earth. It's as 
if he's determined to set the harp 
free from any of the usual 
preconceptions we civilians might 
have about that particular 
instrument, eg that it's too quiet, 
that it doesn't belong in an 
improvising context, that it's a 
soppy instrument only played by 
old bags like Margaret Dumont in 
1 9th century drawing rooms, or 
even - horrors - that it 
immediately says 'Welsh heritage' 
to the casual listener. Rhodri 
Davies throws the rule book out 
of the window, and I can only 
guess from this recording what 
violence he's doing to 
conventional playing techniques. 
The harp has never sounded so 
bizarre, so impolite, or capable of 
such a dirty sound - as near as 
acoustic improv gets to heavy 
metal! 

This record see Davies vying for 
position on the improv 
race-track with fellow Welsh 
player and fellow string-man John 
Bisset the guitarist, judging by the 
inner photo, both of them are 
fond of 'preparing' their 
instruments in a wildly elaborate 
way, with crocodile clips, sticks 
inserted between strings and 
hanging plates of metal being de 
rigeur if you want to maintain 
social standing in the Malthouse 
circle. Bisset's energetic 
free-form strumming technique is 
exactly what's needed to set the 
works in a perfect context, and 
like his fellow countryman he's 
not afraid of flinging out some 
violent acoustic sounds - but 
these sparring bouts never 
descend into the free-for-all 
cliches of which some improv 
combos are still capable. In 
contrast to some yowling, 
big-balled macho improv records, 
Malthouse exhibits a discipline 
and dignity that prevents it 
descending into chaos. But do 
play it loud, whatever you do! 

Comes with a fine cover 
photograph from the Welsh 
National Archives - a very 


atmospheric shot of an actual 
Malthouse, in Trefechan. That 
would have been a perfect setting 
for the making of this record, 
although it was actually recorded 
in a studio of the same name in 
Aberystwyth. 

ED PINSENT 

2:13 Music, 139 Gibson 
Gardens, London N/6 7HH 

Air T raff ic 
Controllers 

Assistant to the 
Assistant 

USA, PARALLELISM PAR003 
CD (1999) 

Existence Period 

USA, PARALLELISM PAR005 
CD (1999) 

Last night I listened to a storm; 
howling rushes of insistent air 
buffeting against the house while 
trees bent and dogs barked. It 
went on for about two hours or 
so, peaking and troughing in 
intensity, occasionally sending 
out a belt of sudden rain to rattle 
against the window. Powerful, 
eternal and totally free. 

In comparison, listening to Air 
Traffic Controllers now sounds 
like some poor bastard trying to 
start his car on a cold morning - 
it evokes a trace of sympathy for 
the effort involved but, 


ultimately, it's just fucking 
annoying and you wish they'd 
give up. 

Guitar and drums. Guitar and 
drums. On and on it goes. Such 
perverse minimalism can often 
bear fruit if the artist is TRULY 
committed to their vision. Sadly 
it seems ATC have read their 
reviews in The Wire and decided 
that this will do, why strain 
themselves eh? It's wank and a 
bad wank at that. Half hard, half 
drunk, head spinning as you flip 
through the mental jukebox for a 
fantasy that will suffice. You 
settle on some tired old scenario 
with Danni Minogue and set 
about the crank. It's surely an 
effort and you've even got time 
to ponder on how fucking 
pathetic and regressive this 
behaviour is - the shaved ape still 
aeons away from a moon landing. 
Insufficient chafing, nerve endings 
novocained by apathy and fiat 
lager, it almost fails but then 
Danni finally shows some interest 
and a hot pointless release is 
achieved. All for nothing. That's 
what ATC sound like. Or, to be 
more precise: 

if it's not Squarepusher beeps and 
squiggles (like the soundtrack to 
an Etch a Sketch) it's a track of 
total silence - ace! Or it's a bad 
pastiche of Radiohead's 'Creep' 
played by a particularly bored 
teenager who's starting to 
wonder if there maybe IS 


something in this DJ lark. 
Meanwhile his annoying younger 
brother plays mogadon drums. 
Bad Eddie Van Halen 
impressions, a chimp hitting a tin 
cup against a desk, reverb fades 
in and out like an iron lung - hey 
I'm really rocking now! 
Saxophone and keyboards 
stumble in drunk and piss on the 
furniture, providing the mouldy 
sliver of bacon to this sad and 
limp looking double 
cheeseburger. 

I've read the other reviews of 
this band - 'a gorgonizing assault 
of guitar(s) 'n' drums carpet 
bomb frenzy', 'glorious, crunchy 
loops of sound' and even 
'humorous capriciousness' and I 
have to wonder if it's just me that 
doesn't get it? Is it concept rock? 
Is it some sort of highbrow joke? 
Or is it just bollocks? I'd like to 
picture drummer Claire Pannell 
suddenly stopping mid-thump, 
turning to her partner - guitarist 
Gerard Cosloy and asking, quite 
reasonably, 'this is bollocks ain't 
it?'. 

Not that I think that will ever 
happen seeing as they are both 
totally lost up the artistic rabbit 
warren of their own arses to be 
able to see the dazzling daylight 
of The T ruth. 

What I want to know is; where is 
the passion? Where is even the 
slightest attempt to cover new 
ground? Where is the attempt to 
convey any sensation other than 
ennui? 

I guess I should never expect all 
that much from a cluster of fools 
who decide to call themselves 
Air Traffic Controllers. What 
next - Refuse Collectors? 
Landscape Gardeners? Estate 
Agents? 

It's like punk never happened. 

RiK RAWLING 31/01/2000 


Army of Ghosts 
The Horror 

USA, PARALLELISM PAR004 
CD (1999) 

'The Horror', judging by the 
track titles and the packaging 
seems to be 'war' and, in 
particular, the Vietnam war. So 




The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 



let's see what this Army of 
Ghosts has to say: Gunfire. 
Hi-Hat. Drunken monkey 
drumming. Alto sax bursts 
reminiscent of Zorn circa Locus 
Solus and occasional bursts of 
skronk but, ultimately, it goes 
nowhere and as a 'statement' 
against the myriad horrors of 
engaged combat is as profound as 
Culture Club's 'War is Stupid'. 

This is where the 'Avant-Garde' 
is most open to criticism from 
the more populist performers 
and critics alike - because this is 
unadulterated bollocks. Free jazz, 
the nearest recognisable 'style' 
employed here, has been done, 
done, done (and done well - 
check out Pharaoh Sanders) and 
has now become the last row of 
sandbags for the eternally 
talentless to hide behind. Quotes 
from Celine, such as: 'Behind all 
music one ought to try and catch 
that noiseless tune that's made 
for us: the melody of Death' are 
peppered throughout the booklet 
insert, along with doctored 
photos and inept faux-naive 
drawings that make your average 
5-year old's doodles stuck to the 
fridge look like Salvador Dali. 
Meanwhile, one of the two men 
involved in this venture calls 
himself 'Brain Army' and he 
appears to have a tash that 
recalls 70s veteran porn star 
Harry Reems at his finest. All this 
may seem trivial and irrelevant 
but, believe you me, it's all there 
is to focus on when the music 
itself is so lost, so not there . On 
the surface it is just a boring 


racket and beneath that it's still 
just a boring racket. Occasionally 
a disembodied voice floats into 
the mix to declare 'Everything is 
just piss'. And maybe it is. 

With music like this I lose all faith 
in the more 'esoteric' end of the 
musical spectrum. It 
communicates nothing and, 
unlike Sun City Girls for 
example, it isn't even knowingly 
and entertainingly dumb. It's two 
guys in a studio, bereft of 
purpose or anything to say, going 
through the motions with the 
misguided conviction that if 
you're obscure enough some 
people will think you're 
profound. There are, I'm sure, 
people who will want to listen to 
this record but I think those 
people should ask themselves - 
how many more better examples 
of this type of music do you 
already have? And do you really 
need a weak imitation when you 
can just slap on some Pharaoh? 
Questions only you can answer. 

RIKRAWLING 01/12/1999 

Parallelism, PO Box 20132, 
London WIO 6ZA UK 
www.parallelism. com 

44444 
44444 
44444 
^ ^ ^ ^ ^ 

^ ^ ^ ^ ^ 


Phil Durrant and 

Alexander 

Frangenheim 

Further Lock 

GERMANY, CONCEPTS OF 
DOING CQD002 CD 

Two string-based improvisers - 
the UK violinist Durrant and the 
German bass player Frangenheim 
- lock antlers in the studio and 
produce 14 tracks during a 
mammoth 1997 session at 
Gateway Studios in London. 

They struggle hard to generate 
something of lasting worth, but 
ultimately this is a very cold 
recording, impressing with 
technique where it should 
convince with passion. The 
recording studio can beat the life 
out of improv; what is usually 
needed is a responsive and 
attentive audience to assist in 
coaxing a great performance 
from the players. Here, while the 
duo can manage to explore a 
good lock-groove exploration of 
a sawing drone on occasion, 
mostly you get these rather 
academic-sounding tweets and 
plucks which do little to take the 
listener out of the sterile 
environment. And a great shame 
too, as Durrant is one of our 
finest players and a man whose 
work should be cherished. 
Another clunker from 
Frangenheim's Concepts Of 
Doing label, and it comes in a 
pretentious arty package too 

ED PINSENT 


Mark Browne 

Burning Ail Of My 
Back Pages 

PRIVATE RELEASE CD-R 
(1999) 

I honestly wish I could support 
Mark Browne in recommending 
this totally independent 
self-produced CD of his, but I've 
tried and tried and these tin ears 
of mine can find very little of 
lasting value in it. Browne is a fair 
to middling and mostly mediocre 
improvising saxophonist, and he 
proceeds to bore the life out of 
me with this 71 minute CD of 
eight indifferent tracks. All solo 
sax, all equally rambling, 
unfocussed and incoherent 
musical non-statements, 
recorded in a uniformly flat, dead 
style. A couple of them come 
from live performances at the 
Red Rose Club in London from 
1 993 and 1 994 - the rest are 
recorded in or around his home 
in Aylesbury. I'm astonished to 
find such a faceless and 
anonymous sound has any takers 
at all. Did anyone go and see him 
and actually enjoy being bored 
rigid? I'd love to hear from his 
fans. 

ED PINSENT 

Mr Browne alternates between 
the alto and the soprano 
saxophone for the eight 
recordings on this home-made 
disc. He plays live, without 
accompaniment or extraneous 
effects, and I would presume it's 



34 


all improvised. The sounds he 
extricates from his tool are all 
over the shop like a mad 
woman's shit, to paraphrase Sir 
Les Patterson. Honking geese, 
plucking noises, armpit spawned 
squeaks and farts all emerge from 
the tapestry of sounds more 
immediately recognisable as 
coming from a saxophone, 
conjuring up the image of a 
cocaine-fuelled Bassett hound 
snuffling around in a park...for 
more than an hour. Were some 
enterprising Scandinavian 
animator to make one of those 
delightful films of such a thing, 
this could be the perfect 
soundtrack. 

I'm trying to take something 
positive from the experience of 
sitting here listening to this. I 
must grudgingly concede a few 
points. It's nicely packaged in a 
jewel case with a plain cover of 
lumpy hand-made paper. It's well 
recorded, capturing the subtle 
nuances of the author's 
endeavours. He has chosen not 
to use effects or reverb, wisely 
preferring the instrument to 
speak on its own terms. I imagine 
this could be fairly compelling in 
a live setting, as the applause at 
the end of one track suggests, 
providing you like that sort of 
thing, and it doesn't go on for 
too long. 

Unfortunately, that (for me) is as 
far as I can stretch it. Burning All 
Of My Back Pages just seems to 
go on and on and on without 
doing anything that might endear 
itself to these lugholes. I can't 
imagine why anybody would 
want to record this, let alone 
listen to it. I cannot picture Mr 
Browne admiring the finished 
disc that's just popped fresh from 
his CD burner, and saying to 
himself 'brace yourself world - 
here I come!' In fact i'd go so far 
as to say this is pointless ARSE 
that has no reason to exist. But 
then of course it wouid be a very 
dull world if we all liked the same 
thing, and who knows, perhaps it 
is really I who am the lumpen 
philistine. Mind you, ! still say this 
is bollocks. If this all sounds 
rather promising to you, and you 
suspect me of having more in 
common with Garry Bushell than 
is proper for a contributor to 
this magazine, then you may 
order Mr Browne's sonic tour de 
force from the address that 
follows. Go ahead. Knock 
yourself out. 

WAR ARROW 

From 12 Spenser Road, 

Aylesbury, Bucks HP2I 7LR 

markvbrowne@ukgateway.net 

***** 

***** 


for more racket than the entire 
'Groups in front of people' 
crowd put together (door 
included). At times it falls away 
to what has been called by 
someone 'microprovisation', but 
mostly we're in the realms of 
near-silence and scratching 
punctuated by shrieks and bangs. 
During the 1 980s I listened to 
free improvisation almost 
exclusively (with occasional 
breaks for English folk music), 
perhaps as a penance for placing 
too much in the ultimately 
self-defeating (even 
self- negating?), cul-de-sac 
experimentation kicked off by a 
handful of post-punk acts on the 
cusp of the decade (stand up 
Cabaret Voltaire, The Pop 
Group, Throbbing Gristle, Wire), 
perhaps to blank out all that 
sleek dross drooled over by the 
Gavin Martins, Ian Penmans and 
Paul Morleys of those times. 

During the 1 990s the sheer 
quantity of CDs of free 
improvisation overwhelms me - 
I'm at a loss to know where the 
growth of audience for this genre 
(implied by the increase in 
releases) resides - I don't see any 
movement from the grubby back 
rooms of pubs to major 
auditoria. It's now impossible to 
get to grips with the genre, or 
the musicians' intentions behind 
these releases - they could 
merely be there to document 
fleeting moments; they could be 
inviting us to treat them as 
immanent works of art; they may 
simply be an alternative source of 
income to gigging. Or all three. 
What I am certain of is that 
sheer quantity paralyses my 
listening. I know, I know - I don't 
have to listen to them all, it's 
simply that by throwing more of 
these releases at what is a 
perennially minority audience can 
do no more than alienate 
listeners from ail but the 'tried 
and tested.' And even restricting 
oneself that way can lead to 
satiety: I don't care what The 
Wire might say about his next 
album, but with 30-odd 
recordings in my collection I 
don't need another Derek Bailey 
album. Right now. I don't 
whether I need alls prima. I 
really don't know whether it's 
good or bad, worth 
recommending or not. Sorry to 
disappoint you. 

CHRIS ATTON 

Concepts of Doing: lm 

Schel/cnkonig 56D, D-70184 

Stuttgart, Germany. 

***** 



The Sound Projector 

Mats Gustafsson 

The Education of 
Lars Jerry 

USA, XERIC XER-CD-100 CD 
(1999) 

Aptly recorded in Chicago 
(which as you all know is known 
as The Windy City') here's a fine 
puffy one, in which Mats 
executes a perfect inhale, swells 
up his cheeks and makes like a 
bullfrog on his saxophone treated 
with electronic effects. 
Lowest-register notes contrast 
sharply with unbearable 
high-pitched tones. The smack 
and crack of his lips against the 
mouthpiece is exaggerated into a 
whacking percussive noise. His 
yawps and yelps are thrown into 
the mix but sound a like a man 
distressed rather than the 
whoops of one joyous to be 
playing. Testing times for all - it’s 
kind of a gloomy record for all its 
spirited restless blowing and 
honking. Actually these are 
probably really modernist 
compositions than improvisations 
strictly speaking, as there's no 
real jazz feeling to any of it. If 
anything it could be the pieces 
are intended to back up the 
strange story in the sleeve which 
states that The Education of Lars 
Jerry is based on a true story by 
John Corbett. It's a joke. I'm 
already confused, but whoever 
wrote the six paragraphs within 
could, of course, be describing 
the making of this record in 
prose, using as many windy 
images as he can wrest from his 
word-processor's vocabulary: 
balloons, hissing radiators, a 
'maniac wind', air conditioning, a 
fan. ..until you reach the hilarious 
punchline, which I won't give 
away. Further narratives are 
coded in the grey cover 
photograph of some pudgy 


SE7ENTH issue 2000 

schoolboy holding his trumpet, 
dressed for receiving some 
award. ..and the episodic nature 
of the track titles, which seem to 
suggest another story within a 
story regarding Lars and his 
windy adventures. Recorded by 
Jim O’Rourke in 1995. 

ED PINSENT 

PO Box 8172, Atlanta, Georgia 
3/ 106 USA 
freemusics@aoi. com 

Alexander 
Frangenheim and 
Gunther 
Christmann 

alia prima 

GERMANY, CONCEPTS OF 
DOING CODOOI CD (1998) 

HANNOVER, EDITION 
EXPLICO EXPL 007 

My goodness, I'm out of touch. 

The last time I heard Gunther 
Christmann was on a supremely 
ascetic double album on Bead, 

Groups in Front of People 
(1979). The featured ensembles 
sounded like a bunch of 
disaffected stocktakers in a 
somewhat depleted musical 
instrument shop. One of the 
more extreme examples of the 
record as document of live 
performance, where you can 
count the handclaps the sparse 
audience offer up after each 
piece and where the sound of an 
audience member exiting (I 
assume exiting) through a 
squeaky door is a rare sonic 
treat. 

alia prima finds Christmann 
(trombone and occasional cello) 
in the company of bassist 
Alexander Frangenheim, playing 
14 improvised duets for a little 
over an hour. These two make 






S T Rt 




Paul Panhuysen 




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The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2 


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The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 



Paul Panhuysen 

Partitas for Long Strings 

USA, XI RECORDS XI 122 CD (1998) 

Achim Wollscheid 

Moves 

GERMANY, SELEKTION SCD022 CD (1996) 

Leif Elggren 

Pluralis majestatis 

SWEDEN, FIREWORK EDITION RECORDS FER 1010 CD 
(1999) 

Three 'site-specific' works, these - and I'm sorry to open with such a 
pretentious sounding elitist term! These sound -artists, I assume, are 
concerned with generating sounds from a very specific environment 
and using very materialist methods. Paul Panhuysen does it with long 
strings of piano wire, as have Alvin Lucier and Terry Fox. Achim 
Wollscheid, the German installation artist, here partially realises his 
dream to 'play a house', making noises from familiar domestic objects 
in a deserted house. Leif Elggren records a CD's worth of bouncing 
around on a steel-sprung bed frame in an art gallery installation - and 
dreams he is undermining the crowned heads of Europe through his 
performance-action. 

Panhuysen is a Dutch minimalist composer and installation artist, and 
he founded the Apollohuis performance space and publishing house in 
Eindhoven. His string installations are vast affairs that are apparently as 
visually sumptuous as they are effective generators of uncanny sounds. 
Unknown to most of the educated Western world, he has installed 
and performed hundreds of his string experiments in carefully chosen 
environments ail over the world. Some are out in the open, some are 
indoors in perfectly suited old buildings and barn-like spaces. He is 
thus unable to do anything wrong in my book and I'm delighted to 
welcome this record into my room. Naturally, in the conceptual art 
tradition, each of these installations is carefully documented - not that 
Panhuysen is like Richard Long who used to exhibit the documents of 
his walks (maps and boring photographs) in art galleries, which were a 
poor substitute for the mystical experiences he claimed to be 
undergoing during his methodically-planned actions. Panhuysen 
thankfully shares with us the recorded sounds of his work for the first 
time ever on CD, and the result for this end-user at least is 72 minutes 
of ecstatic, massive bliss. These are droning clouds of clustered chords, 
with an extremely loud and robustly full sound, and about as far 
removed from conventional music-making as you could wish for. Once 
he's set up the situation - a demanding enough job in itself - Panhuysen 


allows nature to take its course, and lets these uncanny voices speak 
for themselves. In only five minutes of listening, you will be awestruck, 
convinced you're hearing the voices of ancient gods given tongue for 
the first time. Utter transcendency. 

On Pluralis majestatis , Leif Elggren's bedframe-bouncing antics start 
out gloomy - a regular squeaking rhythm prevails for the opening 10 
minutes, which is too slow and joyless to have any remotely sexual 
connotations (such as in the famous scene from French movie 
Delicatessen, currently pastiched as a TV advert for Miller Lite). 

Rather it's meant to suggest the futile mechanical movements of a man 
who's lost his wits - which Elggren directs into a critique of royalty, 
pointing to a long history of clinical insanity amongst various kings and 
queens of history. 'In the history of lunacy monarchies feature far 
more frequently than they ever do in the rest of the world,' muses his 
sleevenote. To illustrate this observation, the original gallery 
installation comprised a set of metal models - chess-piece figures with 
crowned heads arranged beside the bedframe on which loomed a 
larger, more imposing cast-iron black crown. Just as we always 
suspected - there's a madman in charge and the lunatics have taken 
over the asylum. This gloomy thought is underscored when the 
squeaking sound suddenly shifts up a gear and assaults you with 
amplified, industrial mode clanging and grating - the steel springs now 
sound like clanging chains against the hull of a battleship. At this point I 
realised the madness could start to infect the listener, and worried if 
I'd make it to the end with my faculties intact. Dare you take the 
challenge and risk a damaged cerebellum? Well, if you're only going to 
buy one record of a Nordic man jumping up and down on a squeaky 
bed this year, then this is certainly the one I'd recommend. 

Achim Wollscheid's an austere conceptualist from Germany, and 
among other things was responsible for releases in the 1980s under 
the name S.B.O.T.H.I. I'm just putting out feelers into his work and I 
have a hard time grasping some of it, but the concept to this one is 
diggable. 'I had the idea to play a house,' is the headline to Moves, but 
the full-blown original idea was blocked by the sponsors. A shame, as 
it sounded far more interesting - he was going to wire up all 1400 
windows of a warehouse in Frankfurt and make a living sound-art 
museum, everything framed within the parameters of an actual derelict 
space. This Moves CD is a scaled-down version of the concept. An 
entire range of domestic everyday objects are all wired up and played 
by clappers, miniature jackhammers triggered by computer software, 
amplified and mechanised to perform in this 

crazyhouse-turned-arthouse conceit. Cups and saucers, saucepan lids, 
knives and forks and chairs are among the mute objects given voice. 
Every episode grinds away mercilessly; the scrapes and shrieks which 
result are almost completely non-musical, the frequencies border on 
the unbearable, and the whole thing will test your endurance to new 



37 



The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 



Two other good ones are 'Careful Inquiry' and 'And Piano'. Starting 
from a radical rethinking of the idea of 'documenting' performances 
of choral and piano music respectively, they both pick up and 
highlight great chunks of incidental ambient noises created by the 
performers and audience, and incorporate these 'accidents' into the 
finished work. Nothing much new there I suppose, but it works 
exceptionally well in this case to add extra interest to the otherwise 
rather dreary choral piece. The piano work by Monika Weiss is 
modified with transformers, making a delicious bonkers noise which 
harks back to the glory days of good old Stockhausen and his 
ring-modulation treatments of the piano of Aloys Kontarsky. 

However 'Eye-Witness' is a bit of clunker in my view. Put simply it's a 
conceptual game that requires its performers to look at each other 
and clap their hands when they see their opponents blink. Through 
this action, Wollscheid seeks to question the nature of the 
relationship between performer and viewer, reducing it to two 
simple actions (ie the audience gazes, then applauds). The result, 
naturally enough, is a tedious series of amplified handclaps with no 
discernible pattern to them - going on for far too long. That said, I 
find that half of the interest with game-works like this is the fact that 
somebody managed to get it organised in the first place, persuaded 
the players to do it and then actually made the 'action' happen. I 
admire this personally because (as regular readers will know), I can't 
persuade my friends to meet someplace for a cup of coffee, even. 

The fact that the action took place is enough. Many of the documents 
that result from concept art are not always of interest and probably 
don't even have any aesthetic value, so perhaps they shouldn't be 
exhibited at all. 'Eye-Witness' is one such case. 

'Ulysses' is the opening track and another laff-riot game piece like the 
one above. He managed to get over 1 ,000 German schoolkids to read 
one page from the James Joyce meisterwerk (German edition, natch - 
he found a school where the number of pupils exactly matched the 
page count!). They all read aloud at the same time, and so get through 
the whole book in seven minutes - with a loud cheer at the end. I'm 
sure this is saying something rather critical about the rate with which 
we consume the abundance of information these days, because Joyce 
(whose prose is impenetrable enough to begin with) ends up reduced 
to a babbling pile of verbal rubble. 

Add the spoken commentary by Cathy Milliken (which is also distorted 
through those fucking transformer boxes) and without doubt this is a 
fabbo and fun piece of original modern art - 
• even the package is designed in an attractively 
]^^PPP|L " weird way with holes cut from the cover, and 
gad unreadable texts scattered over a fold-out 

sleeve. Charly Steiger, through sleeve designs 
WISl like this, wants to state that a Selektion 

release is far from being just another CD in 
the racks. Wollscheid may come over as a bit 
■ytfAv. serious and humourless on occasion, but 

there's an underlying sense of absurdity to this 
work which I find somehow very engaging. 


IFIF EtGGRf-N-'Ffural 


limits. I've tried this a couple of times now - second time I had to play 
Tim Buckley as therapy - and sorry to report I find it disappointingly 
inert in the final analysis. The site-specificness of it (OK, the phrase 
comes from Achim) doesn't come over at all, despite what the artist 
claims. Nor indeed does the nature of the objects reveal itself in any 
new way. The chattering din is certainly intense, but it resolutely 
refuses to become music. Still, I half-admire the relentlessness of the 
structure, and the fact that Mr Wollscheid is determined to play the 
idea out to its conclusion, come what may. If I lived in a house of hell 
like this, I'd either be having nightmares about the walls swarming with 
clapper-playing termites, or in dread of a million hyper-active kids 
descending on me, all playing their tin drums at once. Yes - Moves is 
that good! 

ED PINSENT 

APOLOGY to Leif Elggren from last issue. 

We published a review of the Antitrade " ’’ 

compilation (on Ash International) which 

wrongly stated that 'a deeply chilling female - j-J* 

voice reading off numbers which might be 

a numbers station, or perhaps the speaking ‘ 'Wi 

dock in another language ' was part of a jH 

track by HHH. In fact it was by Leif, part of 
his track 'Mother!!?' 


Achim Wollscheid 

GERMANY, SELEKTION SCD028 CD 

This is a fine sample collection of recent 
conceptual and gallery-based pieces by the 

German sound artist Wollscheid. Of the five ^ 

works, my favourite - and perhaps the most 
excruciating to listen to - is called '4 x 2', and 
by process of overdubbing of a simple sine 

wave, it generates a whole series of complex 

tones. Refusing the sludge that normally 

comes with white-noise buildup, this work t.V 

remains crystal clear from start to finish, and 

its razor sharp tones slice your head into fine fillets of red meat. Yep, 
this precision-crafted little beast grates on the eardrums something 
rotten, and (much the same as Moves, above) proceeds to inflict its 
aural torture in a merciless way until the entire terrible, inexorable 
structure of the work is played out. It was originally installed (in the 
late 1980s) at art galleries in Frankfurt, Munich and Paris until the 
health inspectors moved in and declared the work was actually illegal 
for human beings to listen to (just kidding about this bit). Working 
underground with recording engineer Peter Fey, Wollscheid found a 
way to transfer it to CD. 


Walter Marchetti 

Nei mari del Sud. Musica in 
secca 

ITALY, ALGA MARGHEN PLANA-M 
9NMN.029 CD (1999) 


i This beautiful recording is an absorbing and 

' astonishing work - and its genuinely unique 

} ",Hb££ sound is guaranteed to amaze you, in a 

' : delayed-action kmda way Mai chctti's piano 

englouti' is so muffled and treated that it 
sounds like it's being played thirty fathoms 
below the surface of the ocean, by Captain Nemo dressed in his 
underwater breathing apparatus of seashells. There's no real 
connection, but this work is as mystical and elemental as another 
'watery' masterpiece. The Sinking of the Titanic by Gavin Bryars. 

This is a bipartite work. Nei Mari del Sud was the first work, and it 
appeared in 1 982 in an awesome installation setting. Musica in secca is 
the tagline that tips you off that this is a 1 999 reworking of the first 
work, only now made possible through a computer programme which 
has enabled Marchetti Rto get the piano to deliver the sort of 
'bichords' he requires. The 1 982 work was a piece of 'acoustic theatre' 
to accompany a staged installation. I think it involved a stage set with a 


38 



The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


grand piano 'floating' in a blue tissue-paper ocean. The audience to this 
bizarre spectacle were treated to a series of weird tape events issuing 
from 1 2 loudspeakers. Clearly, the scale of this magnificent piano work 
is overwhelming, and the CD only offers a glimpse of what the whole 
thing would have been like. It's the residue washed on the shore after 
a massive battle at sea - even if it still is a beautiful thing to listen to. 

Another lovely package from this very artistic-minded Italian label, 
which, with its usual commitment to excellence in packaging, includes 
great colour and black and white photos, impenetrable sleeve notes by 
Gabriele Bonomo, and a conceptual map print by the artist. In all a fine 
work from this veteran disciple of John Cage and homagist to Erik 
Satie. Find a copy of the Suoni Dentro Suoni double CD on Cramps 
Records if you want to hear a sampling of his earlier works from the 
i 960s and 1970s. 

ED PINSENT 


RLW 

Tulpas 

GERMANY, SELEKTION 
SCD 024 5 CD SET 
(1997) 

Five hours pass like nothing 
when you spin this 
awesome and mammoth 
collection, believe me. An 
all-star cast of 
contemporary 
experimenters, 
sound-artists and 
noiseicians of all shapes and 
sizes pitch in to interpret 
the work of Ralf 
Wehowsky, aka RLW, who 
himself casts a fair-sized 
shadow across most of 
mainland Europe as an an 
experimenter of no small 
mien. Well, the man first 
impinged on what's left of 
my consciousness with a 
singular release on 
Christoph Heeman's 
Streamline label, When 
Freezing Air Stings Like Ice 
/ Shall Breath Again , a 
recording so minimal I 
barely knew it was playing apart from the whirring sound of CD inside 
my NAM. It had always been a firm favourite, succeeding in evoking a 
Winter's landscape so palpably that I regularly used it instead of going 
on that holiday to Helsinki every year. Saved me a fortune in air 
tickets, lemme tell ya... 

When this monster slipped out of the envelope I fainted clean away at 
its daunting length, as any four-eyed wimp of my calibre would do. Yet 
I've found it surprisingly easy to thrust it into my artisanal orifice, 
despite its gargantuan proportions and the other difficult obstacles 
which a prospective listener might face. True, it's forbiddingly 
overly-intellectual, and in places po-faced to such a degree that it's 
practically a dark star clean out of the orbit of Planet Big-Yoks. No 
matter. There's such a variety here you'll forgive everything - there's 
noisescapes, drones, twidgets, icy blasts, groans, echoes, bewildering 
cut-ups, enveloping atmospheres, electric storms, white noise, silence, 
conceptual pranks, sound-poems and infinite twists and turns, so that 
it's an inexhaustible Palace of Varieties, an impossible library, a box of 
delights, and a science-fiction menagerie filled with alien beasts from all 
corners of the universe. To extract so many possibilities from a single 
artist's work takes some pretty formidable creative horsepower, I 
think you'll agree. Not even if fifty of the greatest Surrealists joined 
together in one sitting for a cosmic collaborative game of Cadavres 
Exquis would I be as impressed. 

Actually this five-by-five motherfucker goes one step beyond the 
Surrealists. Tulpas doesn't bother to try and scramble common sense, 
sever the chains that shackle the imagination. It's coming from a far 
more high-minded position - it assumes the world is already as 
enlightened as Tulpas, that such extraordinary phenomena as 
communication between spirit worlds, time-travel and 
inter-dimensional warp flights are already part of our everyday lives. 


Scarify, after five discs of submerging your mind and soul in this 
particular magical bath of icy quicksilver, you'll start to see the world 
this way too. Why wasn't it all obvious before? Tulpas proposes more 
than some glib, simplistic idealism to improve the world - it insists on 
acceptance of the deep mystery. You may see the face of God, yet! 

On the other hand, I wouldn't want to align myself one hundred 
percent with all the sentiments expressed herein. Take for example 
the pretentious Bruce Russell, who pompously claims on the liner 
notes that he has been a 'tulpa' for RLW. He refers to a Tibetan myth, 
which is how the collection got its title: a tulpa is a phantom 
emanation created by a mystic or magician to create his work for him. 
Russell may have many redeeming features, but then I've never heard 
the work of his highly-regarded band, The Dead C, so I can't talk. Also 
reckoned as collaborating tulpas are luminaries Merzbow, John 
Duncan, Asmus Tietchens, Christoph Heemann, Jim O'Rourke, Eric 

Lanzillotta, Aube, Achim 
Wollscheid, Rehberg and 
Bauer, Ryoki Ikeda, Steve 
Roden, Noise-Maker's Fifes, 
and many more. ..But it 
would be pointless I think 
to dwell further on their 
individual tracks here, 
mainly because I haven't the 
time or space to do so, but 
also because the identities 
of the individual artists start 
to merge very quickly 
through the duration of the 
Tulpas trance-like sessions. 
This isn't to say it all bloody 
sounds the same 
throughout, but that the 
community spirit of 
collaboration prevails, and a 
new Utopia can be glimpsed 
through the many 
sound-windows. Horrors - 
an egoless world with 
individual identities melting 
away in a cosmic whirlpool? 
Now I'm starting to sound 
like a Buddhist...anyway I 
still recommend this set 
with a clear conscience to 
you all. 

RLW indicated in 
Resonance magazine (Vol 6 
No 2) how he is no stranger to recycling his own work, which he's 
always seen as being in a permanent state of flux anyway. If no work is 
really finished, why not invite other friends and respected artists to 
join in the job of reprocessing these works? RLW chose only those 
sound-artists whose work he respects and with whom he felt a certain 
affinity, and had no hesitation in surrendering the ownership of 'his' 
works to their individual working approaches. They could start 
reworking the structure, get inspired by the atmosphere of a piece, or 
just do a more or less straight remix. In line with these diverse 
approaches, not every artist got the same raw material to work with - 
they might have got a full description of the project and lots of source 
tapes, or just some print-out of musical scores. A fruitful period of 
collaborative communication followed, measured by the very precise 
RLW in the average number of letters or faxes he sent out to each 
artist! After large numbers of DATs had been exchanged in the mail - 
and some collaborators had come to Karlsruhe and worked on his 
hard-disk editing suite - RLW sat down and listened to everything. The 
decision to contextualise everything, through sorting the contributions 
under the five rather cryptic 'headings' and through some re-editing, 
has added extra punch to the entire project. [CD one] is seven 
interpretations of a single composition; [CD two] refers to a 'general 
idea of RLW'. [CD three] relates to present aspects of his work, [CD 
four] to earlier manifestations of RLW. [CD five] is more futuristic in 
approach, spinning out 'related conceptual dispositions, not to speak of 
other material and ideas already in the drawer‘...sounds more like an I 
Ching reading than a sleevenote. Great package (by Charly Steiger) 
with book bound in and weird symbols instead of titles for the five 
discs. Two years in the making (1995-1997) and sure to be recognised 
some day for the timeless classic it already is. 

ED PINSENT 




39 




The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2 


Ectogram 

All Behind the T\/IT 

Witchtower i v II 

ANKSTMUSIK CD 091 CD (2000) 


Odd thing about the overused term Jf Y) /f T 7 

'psychedelic', how it's come to )/ I 

describe all manner of diverse music, // A y // V 

from pop songs to dance-based beat 

tracks - this phenomenon was indeed A A 

noted (not by me, but by a proper 

journalist) in the mid to late 1980s C I y 

when there were not a few -j 

underground-ish bands in the United 

Kingdom purporting to play in the 3nd 311' 

psychedelic style; a time when Bevis ■ « . ‘ 

Frond was in the ascendant, the I I Q I C U 

Rubble series of UK pop-psych LPs 
was lovingly curated by Brian Hogg, 
dance beats were added to Jimi 

Hendrix solos on If Sixties Was Nineties and even chart acts like 
Primal Scream and Julian Cope were 'getting in on the act'. Since then, 

I suppose the phenomenon has either refused to go away, or we've 
developed to the point where 1 960s music has become such a given of 
the musical vocabulary, that bands of the 1990s feel they can easily slip 
into the 'paisley mode' simply because they enjoy the music, without 
any self-consciousness or kitsch suggestions implied. 

Which brings us to this engaging and entertaining record, from a trio 
of Welsh players. Why has Wales become a magnetic field of energy 
for emitting powerful psychedelic waves that draw many a looned 
youngster to its central core? Perhaps a combination of geographic and 
political features have made it an obstinate part of the United 
Kingdom, with undiscovered pockets of resistance lurking in its rural 
endroits, so that many forgotten cultural mores are retained there 
with tenacity. And, I gather, the youth culture in some remote Welsh 
urban wastelands centres largely around drugs anyway. Ectogram's 
Alan Holmes - a fine guitarist and multi-instrumentalist - has been 
associated with other bands of the Gaelic persuasion, including The 
Serpents and (perhaps slightly better known) Gorgy's Zygotic Mynci. 
The Ectogram's obstinacy extends to delivering a song ’Cyfan Gwbl’, 
sung in the Welsh language, so they join distinguished company such as 
Datblygu (whom War Arrow knows about - see issue 5) and - if only 
I'd written down their name - a band 
who sung on an astonishing Trip-Hop 
record in Welsh, and had it played by 
John Peel more than once. 

This AH Behind the Witchtower CD 
has a lovely bright sound and should 
appeal to all lovers of a decent melody 
The songs (especially the lyrics) don't 
do a lot for me, so this listener plumps 
mainly for the sound surface - the 
spaced-out trippy guitar solos, 
backwards-taped drums, sparing use of 
phase effect, and the liberal use of 
analogue electronic noises. The 
bewildering opening track 'Herald 
Speke' alone should be worth your 
entry money. The group have 
professed a desire to 'seriously fuck 
with peoples' heads', and to this end 
include their epic workout 'Spitsbergen 
5' at the end (it’s a strong track, right 
enough) and present their work within 

a lavish full-colour booklet crammed ____ 

with Photoshop-treated chromatic 

images that are straight out of the psychedelic cliche catalogue. Full 
marks for effort, but these guys are too fey and whimsical to venture 
any further out of the psychedelic candy-store. If you want to hear 
some genuinely nasty examples of badly fucked-up acidheads, then 
listen to Mad River’s first LP - then let's talk! 

ED PINSENT 

The Old Police Station, The Square, Pentraeth, Ynys Mon, Wales 

LL758AZ 

www.ankst. co. uk 


;rn 


©®o®o®© 

...and any band willing to accept the 
ridiculous term 'Space Rock'? 


m 


Orange Can 

The Engine House 

REGAL REG36CD, CD (1999) 


I used to work with a couple of blokes who were in a band, the 
brothers James and Jason Aslett. Although I heard little of their music, 
the ideas sounded quite exciting, and I could appreciate their 
frustration with the crazy world of showbiz. Whilst holding down the 
same crap job as myself, and getting up at 4.30 AM to do so, they went 
through periods of ferocious gigging, sacking egotistical spare wheels, 
hiring new members, meeting big musical cheeses and so on. 

Eventually things started to come together. They decided on the name 
Orange Can, which caused mild amusement in the work place, with 
suggestions of corny album titles, Freshly Squeezed and the like, being 
bandied around. One day, their thrusting high powered manager, after 
a few non-starters, found them a record deal and they were off. They 
chucked in the crap job, and started to turn up in big music papers to 
generally favourable reviews. The worst said something like 'this will 
probably be massive but that's because you lot are stupid'. The others 
said 'next big thing' and suchlike. This five track CD came out just 
before Christmas, a holiday which James Aslett finds deeply depressing, 
so he once told me. He explained that this was because one year his 
uncle had hung himself on Christmas 
day. A little shocked, I expressed my 
Jv condolences. 'Yes, it was terrible,' he 

i ',<* continued, 'we couldn't take him down 

until the 5th of January'. 

See. You just don't get that sort of 
attention to detail in the big crappy 
mags that are starting to take an interest 
in the Aslett brothers, particularly as 
these corporate rags are just looking for 
the next - God help us - Travis or 
Stereophonies, a role to which Orange 
Can, happily, are not musically well 
suited. What with my general ignorance 
^ ? t * of da boyz beyond a social context, my 

J greatest fear was that this EP would be 
It rubbish, and I'd have to resort to 
whining something about how I could 
see a lot of work had gone into it. But 
praise be, it ain't so. They've been 
rather lazily compared to The Stone 
Roses, which is a pretty superficial 
, assessment, and doesn't do much in the 

wa y of justice. There's a subtle 

psychedelic undercurrent going on in the chord sequences and the 
understated drifting vocals, but there's more to it than just that. At 
times it goes all Led Zeppelin without the big rock production sound, 
effortlessly progging its way from this into slide guitar-powered 
Deliverance soundtracks, and back again. Outside of Faust - 
particularly Faust IV, which bits of this remind me of - this isn't the 
sort of thing I'd generally listen to, probably because so little of it is 
done with Orange Can’s consummate skill and passion, choosing 
instead to rely on being up front and obvious in its necrophiliac 
intentions towards the music of an earlier decade. This just sweeps 
you away on a gentle wave of watercolour acoustics, half-hidden 
sound effects, occasionally cloudbursting into 'rock rifferama' 


41 



The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


The Mooseheart Faith Stellar Groove Band 



Nimbus 2000 


(© Tommy Vance 1982). I hope Orange Can make it huge, as has been 
forecasted. Aside from the prospect of lucrative scoops like 'Jason 
Aslett laughed as he told me he relaxes by drowning kittens', which I'll 
be taking to the News Of The World as soon as the time and money 
are right, it would make a nice change for mainstream success to play 
host to a half decent band, by way of a change from the usual case of 
tone-deaf artistically barren indie tossers. The Engine House, rather 
than being the debut which sets a peak that will never be revisited, 
sounds like it's only scratching the surface of the great innovations that 
will presumably unfold when the album comes out. 

WAR ARROW 

The Magic Carpathians Project 

Nimbus 2000, Hunting for the Ogopogo 

OGGUM OG6 33 RPM 7" VINYL SINGLE (1999) 

Electroscope 

Wee Baldy, North Utsire, South Utsire 

Longstone 

ST567897/54391 3 

OGGUM OG4 45 RPM 7" VINYL SINGLE (1 999) 

The Mooseheart Faith Stellar 
Groove Band 

The Face on Mars 
Nimbus 2000 

Wojzeck 

OGGUM OG8 45 RPM 7" VINYL SINGLE (1 999) 

Three 7-inch split records from the Lampeter-based Oggum label, 
run by the ever-ready Ruth and Daffyd who also record as Sound 
Pro/ favourites Our Glassie Azoth and Alphane Moon. On these 
split records, the music is mostly a series of inconclusive 
electronic instrumental episodes that sparkle for two minutes and 
then dissipate in the ether, like some unknown astral 
phenomenon. Though the creators involved are clearly in debt to 
a lot of 1970s and Kosmische music, the residual feeling we're left 
with is also very psychedelic. The pressings are all in 
candy-coloured vinyl (one of them looks like a big orange Spangle, 
if anyone remembers those famous sweeties), arrive issued in 
photocopy sleeves adorned with Daffyd's beloved alchemical 
imagery, and are distributed by someone at Cargo they managed 
to befriend...as close as anything comes to the small-press comic 
ventures I once used to support, these nifty Oggum singles are an 
object lesson in making presentable, but affordable, DIY records 
which everyone could learn from. 


Electroscope are Gayle Harrison and John Cavanagh from Mount 
Florida in Glasgow, whence they operate their own little 
Melodybar business and will gladly sell you more of their available 
product if you write to them. They squeeze two short tracks 
onto their side, of which the second is an accord ian-based hymn 
to the Radio 4 shipping forecast. T'would be just perfect for a 
maritime film such as Longitude With Michael Gambon. Longstone 
were last heard of Surrounded By Class on their full-length 
recording for Ochre records, and this track shows they're still 
very keen on paying musical tributes to Cluster and Kraftwerk. A 
minimal 2-note melody is set against a grandfather-clock rhythm, 
gradually losing out to the bubbling and keening electronic noises 
that climb to the front of the mix. The track disappears in a mass 
of reverb, not really knowing how else to end. It’s a pleasant 
series of noises, but lacking a decent structure the track comes 
over as unfocussed. 

The Magic Carpathians Project is actually Atman, the Polish 
semi-improvising band whose Personal Forest C D was a big 
winner with modern hippies a few years ago. This slice of 
'ethnocore deathfolk splurge', recorded live at a festival in Poland, 
sustains the tension all the way through - even where the musical 
links are so tenuous they're in danger of getting lost once or 
twice. Played mostly on acoustic instruments, it's a scary drug-trip 
freakeroonie with rattling percussion, phased guitar drones and 
angry barking vocals driven home by inept snare drum phrases. 
The second half depicts the druggies coming down from the trip, 
and almost sounds like a snide pastiche of what a cynic would 
expect rare 1970s progressive rock LPs to sound like, all mad 
echoing voices gibbering over a slow guitar music beat. Very fine. 

The Mooseheart Faith Stellar Groove Band stand out a mile here - it's 
a psychedelic song! The Oggum people declare this is about the most 
catchy song they will ever do - let's hope they leave any more of this 
kind of nonsense in the can. Martians and telescopes feature in the silly 
lyrics, while a stylophone riff, nondescript lead guitar and limp singing 
feature in the flat production. Pretty dull. Nimbus 2000, on 'The 
Ogopopo', combine a fey storytelling episode with a layering of lovely 
electronic rhythms and Tomorrow People styled sounds - could be 
they're real 1970s television-warped children. Near the end there 
occurs a slightly-echoed piano fragment that is simply iridescent - the 
musicians are experiencing a near childlike-joy in making this record. 
This particular track combines a few twists and turns and is about the 
most 'developed' track in this Oggum batch, with more of a discernible 
episodic structure to it than some of the other pleasant, but drifty, 
pieces of electronica. Their 'Wojzeck' cut veers a bit towards the 
woollier side, but there are some nice sounds and they're placed 
together with a certain deliberation to great effect. Nimbus 2000 are 
an Anglesey-based band debuting on vinyl here, and are part of the 
Welsh underground scene - see for example, last issue's The Serpents 
You Have Just Been Poisoned CD, and anything on the Ectogram label. 

ED PINSENT 


Magic Carpathians :: Nimbus 2000 




og6... mother 33 ipta 
email oggum@globebeLco.uk 
or write to po 

bo*2 2 JampeLer.oeredi giotL** 
«*yd 


Hunting for the Ogopogo 


42 





The Sound 

©®o®o®©® 

©®©®o®o® 

Various Artists 
Infrasonic Waves Volume III 

OCHRE RECORDS OCH036 7" VINYL 
EP (1999) 

Infrasonic Waves Volume IV 

OCHRE RECORDS OCH037 7" VINYL 
EP (1999) 

VOLUME III 

1 . UCM: 'Versuchmodell I ' 

2. Girisu-Jin Futari: 'Understanding Large 
Numbers' 

3. Mount Vernon Arts Lab: 'Broadcasting' 

4. Yellow 6: 'One' 

The third of 4 volumes that make up the 
Infrasonic Waves 7" EP series and limited to 
only 500 copies. That's what the press release 
says. It also promises 'Space Rock delights'. 

Oh shit, I haven't even put it on the turntable 
yet. 

Hang on, this first one sounds OK. Like early 
80s new wave - they've got that Martha and 
The Muffins guitar sound down to a tee 
and...wait a minute. I'm playing it at the wrong 
speed. Here we go, 33rpm and now it sounds 
like a bad copy - or perhaps it's a 'homage' - 
to early Mogwai. Yep, they've even got that 
spoken word sample in there - some croaky 
old French bloke this time. Irrelevant, but not 
as poor as Girisu-Jin Futari. This could be 
Squarepusher or Aphex Twin at their laziest - 
leaving the gadgets squeaking away to 
themselves while they pop out for some fags. 
Behind the modem bleeps some synth floats 
in and gives it some shades of Autechre for a 
while but I'm afraid this is going nowhere. 

Ends suddenly, obviously. 

Side 2 starts with what sounds like the fire 
alarm at work as heard while wearing a 
motorbike helmet. This is the kind of mellow 
moment Merzbow drops in amidst the 
thunder but here it's been drawn out for an 
entire track. Perfect for a 'scary' scene in 
those films where teenagers have sex, pop 
culture discussions and then die. Oh, hang on, 
just got an engaged tone there. What are this 
lot playing at? Mount Vernon Arts Lab should 
be frying chips at car boot sales. 

Yellow 6...get off to a good start. Like 
Immense (from Bristol) they're clearly 
inspired by Mogwai but seem determined to 
stretch the established formula. Bolstering the 
pleasant New Order-style jangle is shuddering 
jolts of 'trip hop' at its most emphatic. 

There's a strong sense of control and drama 
and not a little John Barry in there. The 
rhythm is soon lost amidst a monsoon of 
feedback but Yellow 6, despite a crap name, 
have come out on top. 

VOLUME IV 

1 . Five Way Mirror: 'A Break in the Clouds' 

2. Pulsar 'Natural Selection' 

3. Arparp: 'Remodel/Redial' 

4. Star Phase 23: 'Delay Song' 

With Volume 3 boasting only one track 
worth getting out of the bath to answer the 


Projector SE7ENTH 

door for it doesn't bode well as I tentatively 
drop this sliver of vinyl onto the turntable. 

Track I is 'Five Way Mirror' - the side 
project of Greg from Violet Glass Oracle 
(c'mon!) and the revered Windy & Carl. The 
whole point of side projects, to me, is to be 
able to explore other aspects of your muse 
without upsetting the audience you've gained 
with your established and recognised style. 
Windy & Carl do minimalist breathy drones 
and windborne gusts of nothingness - so 
you'd think that here they'd go and let rip 
with some thrash jazz or hardcore G-rap shit 
but what do you get...what sounds like the old 
lady upstairs hoovering again. Word up - 
Thomas Koner has been there and done this 
already and his shit loosens your fillings when 
played at a sufficient volume. This, in 
comparison, is like putting a Snickers Bar next 
to a much missed Marathon. You know what I 
mean. 

Pulsar - another side project. This time it's 
one of the dudes from...a 'space rock' outfit 
called The Land Of Nod! What the fuck is 
going on? If these guys have got so much free 
time on their hands they should put in for 
some volunteer work. There's lots of needy 
causes out there who need help. Meanwhile, 
we don't need anymore of this diluted Slint. If 
you've got 'Spiderland' then play that instead. 

Star Phase 23 are fucking shit. Hold your 
stereo speakers close to your TV until you 
get that annoying bowel deep buzz that 
sounds like a Stuka is about to dive bomb 
your house. Then turn on your PC, click on 
IE5 and wait for the modem beeps. Put them 
together and you've got Star Phase 23. This is 
music for Daleks. 

Arparp - sounds like someone tampering with 
Roy Montgomery's master tapes. What 
appears to be a badly tuned ('prepared') 
guitar is strummed against a wind tunnel 
howl. That's not to say it's a bad track - it 
builds in intensity and volume as it progresses 
and evinces a boldness of approach sorely 
missing from the previous 3 tracks. Perhaps 
there's a bit of Bowery Electric in there and 
maybe Godspeed You Black Emperor! during 
one of their shorter incidental pieces. Easily 
the best on this EP - full on, focused and 
mildly disquieting. 

So, out of 2 EPs you get 2 good tracks and a 
load of old bonk besides. I've not heard 
Volumes I and 2 but based on this evidence 
I'm willing to suggest that some judicious 
editing could have produced one corking EP. 
Less is sometimes more. 

RIK RAWLING 01/02/2000 

Ochre Records, PO Box 155, Cheltenham, 
Glos. GL5I OYS 
www. ochre, co. uk 

o®o®o®o® 

SubArachnoid Space 
and Walking 
Timebombs 

The Sleeping Sickness 

ELSIE + JACK RECORDINGS EAJ004 
CD (1999) 

SubArachnoid Space are an American 
space-rock band led by Mason Jones, and I 
gotta confess they have made me yawn 
before with their rather dull, meaningless 

43 


issue 2000 

spacey jams which I've heard on Release 
Records, but here - while not fully recanting - 
I admit their lengthy approach to the art of 
music-making starts to seem more 
acceptable, convincing even. There are 
numerous cliches in the genre of space rock - 
chiming guitars, lots of pedal effects, uncertain 
bass lines and even more uncertain 
percussion - but these stumbling blocks are 
eventually overcome by the SubArachs, and 
sometimes even transformed into good 
music. This is partly due to the clear sound 
on this recording, achieved by the production 
skills of cross-over member Scott Ayers, who 
(on this occasion, at least) plays guitar in the 
band but also makes more abstract noises in 
his Walking Timebombs guise - and I'm still a 
big fan of the wildly primitive CD he made 
with Tribes Of Neurot (see issue 4). But I 
must also concede that for a good 60% of the 
time, the SubArachnoid ones are contributing 
some decent playing, even if they take a long 
time to get there - when they finally arrive 
they lock into a druggy, intensive jam with a 
hypnotic rock beat that ultimately wins you 
over. The limitations are overcome and this 
becomes a compelling listen, more than 
simply 'teenagers painting with sludge and 
sound' as the sleeve legend boasts. Boiled 
down from live performances recorded in 
1996. 

ED PINSENT 

September Plateau 

Occasional Light 

ELSIE + JACK RECORDINGS EAJ005 
CD (1999) 

Very pleasant and listenable instrumental 
excursions here, a solo studio recording 
project from 1 997 made by C Jeely, the man 
behind Accelaradeck who has also had a 
release or two on Enraptured. Mostly he 
deploys treated guitars, to blow out gaseous 
billows of rather airy and drifty melodies - 
melodies without any real tune or centre to 
them - floating over a very strong rhythm 
track. In some cases the percussion noises - 
processed woodblocks, or an electronic 
version - are so upfront as to be a major 
distraction. Other tracks, without the drum 
machine, work a lot better and allow you to 
concentrate more on the construction and 
studio artistry at work; there are a lot of 
layers, added riffs, overdubs and instrumental 
tonal washes. Not a single one of these tracks 
really goes anywhere, but the overall effect is 
pleasant enough, and they never outstay their 
welcome. The titles - 'Coast Collapsing', 
'Thinking Of Storms', and 'Glacial Kiss', 
accompanied by the sunlit seashore cover 
photos, tend to confirm the feeling that this 
isn't much more than a musical book of 
watercolour views - but these are pretty 
picture postcards none the less. If you ever 
had a secret liking for Camel, that 
pseudo-cosmic proggy band from the 1970s, 
(own up!) then this might be the one for you. 

ED PINSENT 

o®o®o®o® 

o®o®o®o® 


The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 



Various Artists 

Monsters, Robots And Bug 
Men: A User's Guide to the 
Rock Hinterland 

VIRGIN RECORDS AMBT1 1 2 X CD 
(1996) 

Virtually any band willing to accept the 
ridiculous term 'Space Rock' as a 
description of their music is featured on 
this excellent 2 CD compilation, 
originally released in 1 996 by Virgin 
Records (also responsible for the 
legendary Cosmic Kurushi Monsters). 

As with all compilations there are no 
shortage of duff tracks but the better 
ones are SO good that they simply 
cancel out the shite. 

It could be argued that Disc I peaks 
early with Bardo Pond doin' some 
'Tantric Porno'. Like many bands these 
days Bardo Pond are committed to 
playing endless variations on the same 
until they get it out of their systems and 
go back to their day jobs - the only 
difference being that 'the Pond’ are 
worth listening to while they do it 

Proceedings quickly take a dive though 
with Long Fin Killie who are musically 
up for the job but have made the fata! 
error of employing a whining student 
tosspot for a vocalist. With lyrics as 
poignant and incisive as a Julie Burchill 
column it plays out like Gene doing a 
Spacemen 3 tribute - that bad. Onwards 
and upwards with the always interesting 
Third Eye Foundation - 'Sleep' is nothing 
less than a hurricane trapped in a box 


where it howls and 
shudders and 
hammers the 
listener's senses with 
debris and Force 10 
feedback. For nearly 
seven minutes. 
Awesome. Elsewhere 
there's Bowery 
Electric providing 
'Slow Thrills' - a long 
midnight drive in a big 
truck on an empty 
road. Walls of reverb 
build forever while a 
young girl sings 
nursery rhymes to 
calm her fears. Brise 
Glace has the 
unmistakable slouch 
of pre-Eureka pop 
lunacy Jim O'Rourke 
and goes nowhere, 
overstaying its 
welcome and spilling 
its drink on your rug. 
Pram are lost in a 
opium haze with only 
Trevor Horn to help 
them find the way 
out. Magic Hour are 
generic 'indie' Yank 
dullards with their sights firmly set on a 
bus shelter in the rain. Labradford 
dredge up a continuous stuttering guitar 
screech with spartan Mogwai-esque 
chords and a mumbled lyric of towering 
pointlessness. A mood of quiet 
desperation is maintained throughout 
and it's a good enough place to leave 
the listener wanting more from Disc 2... 

...which gets off to a 
really bad start with 
Mercury Rev. 

Inexplicably 
championed by a 
music press lost at 
sea without the 
reassuring buoy of 
Oasis to cling to, 
their last album was a 
depressing bundle of 
gimmicks and 'Prog 
Rock' indulgences 
that should've been 
treated with the 
contempt usually 
reserved for 
Megadeth or Celine 
Dion. The track here 
'Everlasting Arm' is 
from their early days 
and it sounds like a 
Sesame Street song 
loaded with bad acid 
- unlistenable. What 
else? Flying Saucer 
Attack do their thing 
and do it well, 

Jessamine bore like 


Melvyn Bragg and Windy and Carl rip 
off Roy Montgomery something chronic. 
Godflesh do a 15-minute Rob Zombie 
pastiche that is completely unacceptable 
while those weapon-grade twats 
Stereolab continue to get away with it. 
It’s all starting to go disastrously wrong 
until the previously unheard Sabadon 
Glitz deliver The Lonesome Death of 
Elijah P. Wood’ which is Ennio 
Morricone with a didgeridoo and some 
gadgets that buzz, evoking a fine meld of 
the past of possible future as imagined 
by Hollywood. US Maple (the worst live 
band I've ever seen) threaten to ruin 
everything but fuck off after less than 
two minutes which is OK with me. 

Space Needle close proceedings with a 
Velvet Underground pastiche that does 
no wrong. There's also a hidden track 
that turns out to be Stars Of The Lid - 
the sound of steady rain falling and 
resonant surges of synth like sunlight 
breaking through the clouds, which is 
probably the only way to finish it. 

With great packaging - neon blocks and 
kids' doodles, sci-fi comic cut and paste 
and the ubiquitous 50s Americana - this 
is one great compilation spread too far 
and tainted by the art school drop outs 
who see 'doing Post Rock' as a viable 
alternative to slopping out lattes in 
Starbucks. Some Witchfinder 
General-style editing could have made 
this into something special. As it is we 
have to rely on the CD remote to weed 
out the undesirables - whether they are 
the Monsters, Robots or the Bug Men is 
up to you. 

RIK RAWLING 14/12/1999 



44 



The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2 


People Like Us 

Hate People Like 
Us 

STAALPLAAT STCD126 2 X 
CD (1999) 


People Like Us 

Meet The Jet Black 
Hair People. ..In 
Concert! 

BELGIUM, AUDIOVIEW 
AUDIO005 CD (1999) 


These issues are a couple of | | 
fine gems rendered in what we I 
are obliged to term the | 

Plunderphonic mode. Let PLU 
speak for itself in the attached interview. Just 
gotta tell you these massively enjoyable 
records are delirious, intoxicating and 
deliciously funny. Both funny amusing and 
funny peculiar. PLU work mainly with found 
voices, seamlessly edited with gaps, repetitions 
and elisions so as to swiftly undermine any 
common sense. But far from resulting in 
scrambled nonsense, these treatments make 
the voices say things they didn't mean in the 
first place. The simple erasure of a negative, 
the insertion of a rude word from another 
source, or the repetition of some 
commonplace phrase - all of these work as 
devastating tools of satire. As regards satire, 
you get the fairly familiar send-ups of 
advertising and radio jingles, you get strange 
stories, litigants in dismai iegai cases, foreign 
language learning records, and what have you - 
all woven together into a rich and wonderful 
send-up of the absurdities of contemporary 
society. On the other hand, an even more 
powerful tool is the simple loop-trick: 
something heard first time which was 
embarrassing enough, becomes excruciating 
on the second listen and sheer agony on the 
third...PLU quickly exposes the stilted qualities 
and utter banality of everyday speech, and the 
broken-off dialogues curling back on 
themselves suggest, finally, the total 
impossibility of real communication. Bleak.. .yet 
funny at the same time. 

The effect is doubled and then some when it's 
played against the music backdrops - which 
include some of the cheesiest and sick-making 
easy-listening LPs ever committed to vinyl in 


Cut & PASTE 


PEOPLE LIKE US 
THE TAPE BEATLES 

EXTRACTED 

CELLULOID 


Strange Cutting and 
Editing 

Plunderphonics 




the name of popular commercial entertainment. These 'Incredibly Strange' records are, like the 
voices, sabotaged - no sickly musical moment is left untouched before it's minefielded with a 
heavy-metal feedback solo or glitched mercilessly by tape cuts, CD skips and endless loops, 
repetitive strategies that carefully reveal the essential inanity of this kind of Oxfam-shop trash 
music. In all, each track is a gigantic 'cookie full of arsenic' (to quote Clifford Odets' The Sweet 
Smell of Success), each listening moment is barbed with a witty edit which slices into you as 
precisely as a stiletto. 

Hate People Like Us is a double CD of remixes of all her deleted records, executed by such 
people as Cyclobe, Farmers Manual, Christoph Heemann, Death In June, Mika Vainio, Coil, 
Felix Kubin, Boyd Rice and many others. It starts off kind of wacky on the first disc, but soon 
spirals into darker territory as the shadow of disc two eclipses it. The collaboration one is 
with a guy from Negativland, with whom she is often compared. But People Like Us are far 
more fun. 

ED PINSENT 


The Tape-Beatles 

Good Times 

THE NETHERLANDS, STAALPLAAT STOP 136 CD (1999) 


The back cover image for this CD is a 50s Americana advertising image featuring an 
almost-orgasmic housewife fondling some weird looking cleaning appliance. Track titles include: 
'Beautiful Necessity', 'Success Through Vibration' and 'Byways of Ghostland'. The band are 
called The Tape-Beatles. Hmmm. I think I already know what this record is going to sound like. 

And, fuck me. I'm not wrong! Much as I expected you get muffled TV sounds while someone 
with a headache tunes a radio, samples of self-help tapes, interview cut-ups, children reading 
out loud, opera singers warped into wolf howls, drums on reverb. It's your every day 
plunderphonic raid on the detritus of popular culture laid over Fisher Price drumbeats, James 
Brown grunts, trumpet bursts, Last Night of the Proms, fist fight sound effects, car chase tyre 
screeches, broken glass, explosions, fireworks. Movie trailers, sci-fi laser blasts, drums, drums, 
fucking drums. 

It all sounds like 6th formers with a sound rig paid for on Dad's credit card, pissing about in the 
bedroom, high on Sunny D and hoping this all makes some 'comment' on work culture, media 
lies and the numbing adult world they are about to enter. If it is adults doing this then they 
obviously don't get out much, creating their narrow reality tunnels from the signals they 
receive via the satellite dishes in their backyards. Essentially this is 
Negativland with no sense of humour and a lot less range. What may have 
sty* - once sounded ’cutting edge' is now simply a parody of itself. Paul 

.. Hardcastle's 'Nineteen' was more potent than this and that was 1 5 years 

ago for fuck's sake! Don't give up the day jobs fellas! 

*£lr RIK RAWLING 01/12/1999 


f* - 

f 

W i 





nw 


Staalplaat, PO Box 11453, I00IGL Amsterdam, The Netherlands 
www.staalplaat. com 
Contact The Tape-beatles at: 

Public Works Productions, PO Box 3326, Iowa City IA52244 USA 
www.soli.inav.net/~psrf 

Various Artists 

Extracted Celluloid 

USA, SEELAND RECORDS 509CD / ILLEGAL ART 002 CD (1999) 

An excellent record very much in the Negativland tradition, if we can 
have a tradition that's a mere 20 years old...here be cut-ups and sonic 
layerings that will amuse and entertain you, while at the same time prove 
extremely worrying and subversive. 20 tracks by 19 different artists, yet 
the message in every instance seems to be pretty much the same - the 
modern world is completely insane. In fact it's not only insane but 


45 



The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 



completely out of control, everyone's 
intention is malicious, and modern life is filled 
with peril - not just the obvious menaces, but 
more subtle dangers that you know next to 
nothing about. This record aims to pull aside 
the veil of civilisation, and reveal the chaos 
that lurks at the heart of all our absurd 
activities. At the same time, it shows us the 
prison bars that remind us there is no chance 
of escape from our self-made jails, Death Row 
is our ultimate destination and the Governor's 
reprieve won't get through in time. 

Blit hey - don’t get depressed, because the 
Illegal Art folk want us to laugh at life as well! 
This is a darn fine entertaining CD, especially 
in the places where it pokes remorseless fun 
at popular culture. TV, movies, and MOR pop 
records are all fair game to these wicked 
sound-artists - and the tricks of sampling, 
looping, repeating, backwards-masking and 
speeding up all of these sources are very 
familiar to us by now, part of the basic 
grammar of subversive record-making for 
which Negativland helped write the Primer. 
They are being done exceptionally well here 
by the way, in a manner that makes chart hit 
record with a TV sample on it look pretty 
soppy. The Illegal Art mafia, I suspect, both 
love and hate these popular sources, which 
they celebrate and massacre in one and the 
same breath - often on the same record! It's a 
heady brew for the listener, who is pulled and 
pushed every which way but loose. These 
records never let you off the hook; you don't 
know where to put yourself and you can't 
simply sit there soaking it all up like a sponge. 


More than simply challenging our assumptions about everyday culture - be 
it a Sergio Leone western or a Kung Fu movie - this kind of record rips 
those assumptions to pieces, and tramples over the gutted bodies with 
hob-nailed boots. By extension, our assumptions about everything else 
(our lives, our jobs, haircuts, clothing, friends and belief systems) are also 
called into question. Who's controlling us, and making monkeys of us all? 
Through cut-ups and varispeed, virtually all human speech on this record 
is either completely torn out of context, or immediately transformed into 
gibberish; after 30 minutes of listening, the gibberish becomes the new 
language. The William Burroughs nightmare has come true. 

Are there really 19 artists making records like this in America? Could 
they instead be aliases for the same members of Negativland? When I 
read a list of names that contains Andrew Q Hayleck, Pine T ree State 
Mind Control, Pedro Rebelo and Spacklequeen, I'm reminded of the 
Devil's Dictionary and Ambrose Bierce's superb set of aliases for his 
wholly fictitious poets and philosophers, such as Fr Gassalasca Jape, Joel 
Frad Bink, Narany Off, Aramis Loto Frope and Joel Spate Woop...if you're 
not familiar with that book, I recommend it. Also this fine CD. Let me 
know if you have any success ordering it...l somehow doubt if they 
secured permission to use a single one of these samples (what outlaws!) 

ED PINSENT 

Seetand Records, / 920 Monument Blvd, MF-i, Concord CA 94520 USA 

www. detritus, net/illegalart 



46 



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turned itself inside 
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THIS 

IS 

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Speakers 

XXX 

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48 






The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 



Nocturnal Emissions 
Interview by WAR 
ARROW 

The announcement opposite first came out of 
my speakers in 1 983, courtesy of Viral 
Shedding, the fourth album by Nocturnal 
Emissions. This was a group who had first 
appeared just as Throbbing Gristle imploded, 
and thus, along with Test Department, 
Konstruktivists, 400 Blows and others, were 
saddled with the 'Industrial' tag. They were all 
a bit noisy you see. Nocturnal Emissions' first 
few releases could almost have been 
recorded directly off the shop floor at Fords, 
were it not for the subtle suggestion that 
there was a lot more going into this music 
than just amplified noise. Around the time of 
Viral Shedding it seemed like everybody had 
learnt that their synths could approximate 
dance music, so beats and melodies were 
creeping in, but of the whole bunch, 
Nocturnal Emissions produced the only 
album that made a truly dirty funky noise. 

This was not Sheffield synth-pop. If earlier 
tracks like 'LD-50' represented the horror of 
the animal labs where unspeakable 
experiments were carried out in the name of 
eliminating bodily odour, the difference was 
that now they'd got James Brown strapped 
into the Shampoo tester. It was an incredible 
album, and far more listenable than I may 
have just implied, not least because of how 
radically different it sounded compared to 
earlier works. Yet it remains consistent with 
the rest of the NE back catalogue which is 
punctuated by a iiuinbei of equally dr amatic 
changes in focus. A greatest hits album by this 
group would sound like a compilation, if not 
for the consistency in quality, innovation and 
an indefinable but distinctive undercurrent of 
subversive humour, captured best by the 
name itself which was chosen to imply 


something that happens secretively and 
perhaps unconsciously, outside the realms of 
the polite conversation that defines consensus 
reality. 

Over a period of nine months, I exchanged 
letters with Nigel Ayers, the principal player 
of the band. The 'dialogue' passed backwards 
and forwards on bits of paper, edited and 
re-edited into a whole which flows at least as 
easily as any NE release. My initial intention 
was to discover the elusive undercurrent 
which informs the early overdriven onslaught 
of 'Smear Campaign' through the 
carpet-bombing funk of 'Body Count' to the 
pseudo-hypnotic soundscapes of more recent 
times. I'm not sure If I actually got an answer, 
but it was an illuminating and entertaining 
journey. In what follows, Nigel's occasional 
claims to have originated every new musical 
advance of the last two decades, should 
probably be taken with a pinch of salt. But on 
the other hand, whether by coincidence or 
not, a number of his records do seem to hint 
at what others would popularise about five 
years down the line. On several occasions 
Nocturnal Emissions seem to have been in 
the right place but a few years ahead of the 
right time. Anyway, I started at the beginning. 

xxxxxxxxxxxx 

WA What initially inspired you to start 
making music ? 

NIGEL Most probably pragmatism. Music is 
easy to replicate and its packaging allows 
opportunity to circulate text and Images. I 
found it an accessible and effective form of 
publishing. 

WA So, what were you doing before ? 

N IGEL I did a BA degree in sculpture when I 
was i 8 to 2 1 . Which meant that after i ieft, 
they put me on the 'executive register' - on 


the dole - and said I was effectively 
unemployable. I then did a series of crap 
jobs, labouring and factory work. I always 
wanted to put out records - and books too - 
just affordable things that people can handle 
and play around with. I suppose this is why 
I've never wholeheartedly pursued gallery art 
that just ends up on one person's wall for 
no-one else to see. So anyway, together with 
Caroline K who was my partner at the time, 
we saved up and put out our own tapes and 
records, Then later the strange thing 
happened that I made some no-budget videos 
for Nocturnal Emissions and places like the 
Tate Gallery and the ICA started screening 
them, so I ended up doing what was called 
'art.' while trying to do something different! 

WA i presume this would be the Bleeding 
Images video ! / remember someone at art 
college going on about it at the time. / never 
sa w it but I can't really imagine a band in an 
open top Cadillac miming to 'Model Control 
Organism ', so / assume you took a similar 
approach to your visuals, as to the music ? 

NIGEL We were called the pioneers of 
'scratch video', or 'video scratching' - 
whatever. We used Super 8mm for years - 1 
made experimental films when I was 13 or 14 
that are every bit as good as Channel 4 - 
which is not a great boast. So the videos were 
pretty painstakingly assembled on Super 8 - 
partly documentation of live performances 
and re-enactments of classic exploitation film 
scenarios, I was well into plagiarising 

1 * TV/ fwlyins *U e —X ~ J .... 

i uaucaat i v , utrs.ii ig uic pua uui v_/i ctu *ci o 

and then putting the whole lot through 
wonky colour TVs and filming it again. The 
videos were all crash edited on domestic ‘vHS 

1 borrowed off SPK. Grungey early 80s VHS. 
So what you get is the 'authenticity' of The 
Blair Witch Project with the look and feel of 

2 Jot of TV title secj i jences you get these dsys. 


49 


The Sound 

I played those vids back recently. They could 
have been made yesterday, but of course this 
was all done in the early 80s when that kind 
of presentation was seen as shocking, 
interesting and new, People were really 
drawn into those pieces. I remember 
audiences suddenly going quiet, and this was 
in 'art installations' where people normally 
just chat and socialise and drink wine and 
that. I stopped working on video when the 
video recording censorship bill came in - 
seeing as how the vids included shots of sex, 
animals being tortured, and all that recycled 
footage. I wasn't interested in pushing 
deliberate crudeness for year after year and 
then getting locked up for it. Or perhaps just 
because it was so successful, I lost interest in 
it. Well, the basic ideas are all there in 
Burroughs' Electronic Revolution, which is 
probably on the national curriculum these 
days. 

WA You mentioned that you've always 
wanted to put out books too. 

NIGEL I'm a bibliophile, they love me at the 
library, those sexy hardbacked temptresses. 
When I get older I'll finish the various novels 
I'm writing and start collecting rejection 
letters, My favourite authors are Flann 
O'Brien, Stewart Home, John Michell, and P 
G Wodehouse - or do I mean Raymond 
Roussell? 

WA Sorry to go on about ancient history, 
but who or what were Pump! Was NE a 
direct continuation! 

NIGEL That was me and my brother Danny 
and Caroline K and some others, so NE were 
pretty much a direct continuation of them. 

The difference is NE were always a lot 
tighter. 

WA You seem to have made at least two 
quite dramatic changes of direction over the 
years, notably with Viral Shedding and then 
The World Is My Womb. 

NIGEL I was sent to a right cow of a piano 
teacher when I was a kid - and this put me 
right off conventional ways of making music, 
but I loved to mess with sound. I was 
exploring elaborate tape loop and FX 
processes to make bad-trip psychedelia that 
some people called 'Industrial' music and 
'noise' ... then I realised I could use the exact 
same processes to make something 
approximating pop music, and wouldn't it be 
funny to do so - wrapping those paranoiac 
themes up with compulsive beats and proper 
tunes. I first tried it on Drowning in a Sea of 
Bliss. Both sides of that record use the same 
processes, but different elements - one side 
noisy, the other side groovy ... this was done 
on 4-track reel to reel tape loops. Then I got 
the 8-track to do Viral Shedding. Basically I 
liked what was happening in dance music at 
that time - what they call 'old skool' now - 
Whodini, Grandmaster Flash and the daftness 
of Malcolm McLaren's Duck Rock. I wanted 
to dip into that kind of unifying celebratory 
sound, but give it the edge of the industrial 
noise. The records I did then were very 
influential. Scruffy little squatters Nocturnal 
Emissions started appearing on compilations 
with New Order and a load of other famous 
early techno people. We even got some 
airplay and big crowds coming to gigs, we 
headlined at one of the first WOMADs. Up 
to this point I was collaborating very closely 
with Caroline K - but she really didn't like 
performing at all and would pull out of gigs at 


Projector SE7ENTH 

the last moment and quite frankly, was 
bonkers. I got some more people in, but I was 
pretty crap at the logistics of running a band 
and I paid the ungrateful bastards too much 
and ended up skint myself. By this time I was 
also running my own record label and my life 
was getting very business-oriented and I 
wasn't really prepared for the kinds of 
pressure I was under. I'm not very good at 
being a capitalist. The decisions I made were 
more to do with what interested me 
creatively, so I took the more arcane route 
into The World Is My Womb , which was 
really looking at what you'd now call 
'pre-Millennial tension’ from the perspective 
of the first Millennium. So that was really an 
exploration of medieval music and religion, 
but done on a Greengate sampler - because 
this was the 80s after all. As well as this 
'serious art', I was also trying to get an acid 
house project off the ground (check the 'Da 
Dum' single that came out with Spiritflesh) - 
this was 86 or 87, and I had my mutant 
hip-hop Spanner Thru Ma Beatbox project 
going. I remember my label manager at Red 
Rhino distribution saying acid house would 
never catch on in the North of England. Ho 
ho ho. Anyway, later that year Red Rhino 
went bust and I ended up back on the dole 
again. Caroline had hung onto most of the NE 
studio stuff, which she sold off as she retired 
from music making. So I was left with minimal 
equipment, and for quite a few years I made 
minimalist music. Then of course that whole 
'ambient' scene grew from the kind of music I 
was doing. In fact, every major musical 
movement in the past 20 years was ail my 
fault. I am to blame for it all. If there is an 
underlying theme through all my work it is to 
do with communicating with and exploring 
'other' and more 'real' worlds, rather than the 
confection that is 'consensus reality'. If I have 
a role therefore, it is as a pioneer and 
explorer, rather than a cash-inner. To 
explore, you have to move around, not 
simply follow the first path you happen upon 
and then stay on it because it is familiar, or to 
do things because they win you riches, favour 
and followers, I leave it to others to convert 
the diamonds I share back to base material. 

WA Was there any specific attempt to 
distance yourself from previous work ? 

NIGEL More of an attempt to distance 
myself from the scene my previous work 
attracted. Some of my work with carefully 
structured environmental sound ('noise') and 
satirical visual pieces using 'shock' imagery to 
parody consumer society - found favour with 
people in the so-called 'industrial' 
underground. They had - and continue to 
have - a tendency to fetishise such imagery in 
their own miniature consumer society - and 
largely missed the point of what I was doing. 

I think I made it clear at the time what I was 
on about. To this end I put out various press 
releases which were in Tract 002. 

WA i take it then you'd grown weary of 
being asked about the usual 'apocalypse 
culture ' cliches. The first Earthly Delights 
press release suggested to me a desire to 
focus on less depressing subjects, and to 
discourage people from sending you tapes 
with death camps on the cover. 

NIGEL Yup. I'd rather people used their 
brains a bit, instead of buying 
off-the-peg- identities from the Amok 
catalogue, It all smacks of fascism. 


issue 2000 

WA Which paints a fairly dear picture of 
who you don 't listen to. / find it difficult to 
detect any specific musical influences on your 
records, and only very general ones on the 
more dance friendly offerings. So what do you 
listen to, or have you listened to in the past ? 
There must surely be some artist that 
influenced your direction when everyone else 
and their milkman was trying to become the 
new Sex Pistols? 

NIGEL The Sex Pistols eh? They could rock. 

I liked them despite their impoliteness and 
lack of courtesy. I missed their Bill Grundy 
TV thing when they did it. in '76, but I 
remember this Lou Reed lookalike general 
studies lecturer going on about punk rock, 
and me wondering what the fuck it was, Then 
I heard the Pistols and thought 'Oh, it's what I 
listen to anyway'. I'd been tormenting people 
with the MC5 since way back. 

WA Influences. You were saying. . . 

NIGEL If you look at the whole of that 
so-called 'Industrial' scene from Cabaret 
Voltaire to Marilyn Manson. the band with the 
most far reaching influence wouldn't be 
Throbbing Gristle, but... Hawkwind! This is 
something that they rarely mention in the 
press, as Hawkwind have this reputation as a 
British 'hippie band' who do 'science fiction' 
and theatrics, and therefore must be naff. 
Whereas if they were a German hippie band... 
Zoviet France have told me they were very 
keen on Hawkwind. SPK were well into 
Hawkwind back in Australia. And what are 
Graeme Revell (SPK) and Brian Williams 
(SPK, Lustmord) doing nowadays? Making 
soundtracks for science fiction films - I rest 
my case! I think it's about time Hawkwind 
were reassessed. I have long been tired of 
those outfits who cite influences no-one has 
heard of, or can stand listening to. Back in the 
early 70s, Hawkwind were the first band I 
was aware of to popularise the idea of sonic 
attack - infra and ultra sound as a weapon. 
Listen to 'Sonic Attack' on Space Ritual. That 
of course has long since been taken up by 
that whole noise scene, but. Hawkwind were 
rarely acknowledged. If you look at the 
'information war' thing, you'll notice that 
Hawkwind had the post-modern writers, 
Michael Moorcock and Bob Calvert working 
with them. Though Moorcock is best known 
for his very popular science fiction and 
fantasy genre work, it's more accurate to call 
him a postmodernist or at least a modernist. 
Moorcock pointed many in the direction of 
William Burroughs and J.G. Ballard and - 
stone me, he even wrote for Ro/Scsrch. 

When Hawkwind's In Search of Space came 
out in the early 70s, it came with a booklet of 
very similar material to what the London 
Psychogeographical Society, The Association 
of Autonomous Astronauts, Ian Sinclair, and 
Tom Vague have been doing more recently. 
Whenever I used to see Psychic TV, I thought 
'Hawkwind'. Whenever I saw Throbbing 
Gristle I thought 'Hawkwind without the 
lights.. .and without the tunes’. That combat 
clothing thing - Hawkwind! Which brings me 
to the point that I would definitely question 
the history of punk rock and weirdy music 
that overlaps It - that media hacks have 
tended to spout. I remember that, apart from 
media darlings the Sex Pistols, the DIY punk 
scene in early 70s Britain seemed to be much 
inspired by the efforts of Hawkwind, the 
Edgar Broughton Band, the Pink Fairies and 
even Gong - and the context of the free 


50 


The Sound Projector SE7ENTH 


festivals, Free festival - a self-organising 
proletarian cultural gathering often involving a 
bit of a knees up and maybe a punch up with 
the coppers. See also 'rave'. Brian Eno, for 
example used to hang out with the Pink 
Fairies. The whole set-up and costuming of 
Roxy Music was a direct crib off Hawkwind. 
AMM - my arse! Eno's a popularist, otherwise 
why's he working with U2? In 1 972 
Hawkwind followed up 'Silver Machine' - a 
million selling hit about a time travel machine 
built by the pataphysicist Alfred Jarry - with 
the single 'Urban Guerrilla'. It was pulled by 
the record company because of fears about 
an IRA bombing campaign in London at the 
time. They later re-recorded it with Johnny 
Rotten, joe Strummer's (Olers and The 
Stranglers used to play on the same bill as 
Hawkwind in the free festival days, pre 1976. 
In interviews at the 
time, Strummer cited 
Hawkwind as an 
influence on The 
Clash's first album. 

Pete Shelley of The 
Buzzcocks admitted 
he spent a lot of his 
youth listening to 
Space Ritual and 
derived a lot of his 
musical direction 
from it. And of 
course Lemmy of 
Motorhead used to 
play bass in 
Hawkwind. I went to 
see Sun Ra and his 
Arkestra once, and I 
got bored after 20 
minutes of that jazz 
shite and went home. 

I've seen Hawkwind 
loads of times and 
they rock! 

WA As I've 
probably banged on 
about in reviews, a 
lot of your stuff has 
for me a 

disembodied quality, 
almost as though it's 
channelled through 
to rather than 
created by you. Does 
this notion have any 
relevance to your 
actual working 
methods j 

NIGEL It has a great 
deal. My working 
method have a bit of 
the alchemist and a 
bit of the shaman 
about them. It's 
communicating with 
the spirit world and 
abandoning the 
concept of 'individual personality'. 

WA Which could make for appalling 
soporific audio toilet water of the kind that 
most artists labelled ’ambient' seem to churn 
out, but happily you are generally able to 
avoid the common pitfalls of producing subtle 
and atmospheric music, for want of a better 
word. Is this a conscious thing, or just plain 
luck ? Would you even consider your record 
in terms of being 'ambient ? 


NIGEL I should point out that even though I 
channel messages from the spirit world, I 
don't necessarily believe the bullshit the 
spirits tell me. It's all very tightly edited and I 
tend to use my intellectual faculties a lot 
more than the 'amby-pamby' crowd do. 
'Ambient' means background music. My music 
shifts from background to foreground, so I 
wouldn't consider it ambient. I consider what 
I do to be a subversive music, because it 
messes with people's heads in unexpected 
ways. 

WA Which brings me to a subject / expect 
you're heartily sick of. / understand you've 
dabbled in the use of subliminals on record. 

NIGEL What I've been reading lately on 
brain/mind research makes the concept of 
subliminals questionable indeed. Do you 


think The Exorcist is scary? Is that because of 
the use of the sound of pigs being slaughtered, 
bees swarming in the background, or the 
single frame of a white death mask? Or is it 
the background context - hysterical religious 
groups suckered into protesting against it in 
the '70s? I went to see it recently and found it 
boring, except that there was almost a fight 
between two or three members of the 
audience and the manager. That's Penzance 
for you. I've used about every sound 


issue 2000 

recordable on record, at both a liminal and 
subliminal level, I'm not fussed. 

WA How do they work ! 

NIGEL The theory is that the mind 
processes, absorbs and remembers 
everything that the eyes and ears are exposed 
to, no matter how heavily disguised the 
message may be. If you read Wilson Bryan 
Key's books - Subliminal Seduction for 
example - he suggests that the words 'sex' 
and 'death' are airbrushed very very faintly 
into the ice cubes in Martini adverts, and that 
these very subtle, so subtle as to be 
undetectable messages, influence you to go 
and buy Martini, because everyone has a 
death wish. The books are fascinating, and 
quite potty. It's on the level of the backwards 
messages Christian groups found on Judas 
Priest, and 
surprisingly. Venom 
records. Gullible fool 
record collectors 
will go on about how 
there's subliminals 
on it, how there's 
ultrasound. It's all a 
load of bollocks to 
anyone who 
understands the 
science, because 
despite what Freud 
said, the brain 
doesn't process and 
remember every 
little detail of 
everything. Wilson 
Bryan Key is just 
doing the equivalent 
of staring at a fire 
and seeing elephants. 
That's what my 
grandma, a woman 
not noted for her 
grasp on reality, used 
to do. 

WA So they don 't 
actually work ! 

NIGEL What works 
more is the context. 
But when you work 
in music you're 
dealing with loads of 
different audience 
expectations. Mood 
is affected by all 
sorts of triggers. So, 
the theory of 
subliminals is similar 
to the theory of 
homeopathy, the 
smaller a dose of 
something, the mere 
powerful it's 
supposed to 
become. Now I 
know plenty of 
people who swear 
by homeopathy, but I don’t think that works 
either, and they ain't too pleased when I tell 
them! Music is a complex business though and 
most people don't sit down and analyse it, so 
perhaps to them it has a subliminal effect. 

WA Going back to ultrasound, a subject I'm 
contractually obliged to mention in anything 
that appears in The Sound Projector, is it true 
that you once used big naughty speakers in a 







The Sound 

live setting of the kind that are reputed to 
cause tummy trouble ! 

NIGEL More than once, quite a lot, and they 
also make you go deaf. Always use hearing 
protection, then you get all the fun of pooing 
your pants without the damage to your 
hearing. 

WA So what is Practical Time Travel, the 
latest CD, all about! Ed Pinsent reckons he's 
seen a book with that title which is something 
to do with achieving time travel through 
scaring at the stars for a while. It sounds a 
little rum to me. 

NIGEL I've been experiencing a lot of deja vu 
and wanted to look into what time was all 
about. All music is to do with control over 
time in some way, it's a time based art. I 
wanted to explore where I could take it and it 
could take me. Like I say, I make music of the 
future. This is strictly to do with my 
experience of time. Time isn't an absolute. It's 
a human-made construct. I don't know what 
Ed's been reading, but if you look at the stars, 
you're looking back in time, cause they're so 
far away and light takes so long to travel that 
what you're seeing happened quite some time 
ago. The next issue of NEtwork NEwsvnW be 
a time travel issue, where the practicalities 
will be sorted. 

WA How did OeA\pus Brain Foil come 
about! 

NIGEL I got on the phone to Robin Storey 
who I knew from his Soviet France days 
(spelling it with an 'S' is better I think, don't 
you?) - I’d done a live improvisation with him 
once and suggested we could do a CD by 
swapping DATs backwards and forwards. So 
we did that. And then it turned out that 
Randy Greif was doing a similar sort of thing 
with Robin. They'd met in California. Then 
Charles Powne of Soleilmoon suggested we 
made it a threesome and I did one with 
Randy, whom I’ve never met. Then it turns 
out that Randy works as a 'real estate agent' 
and he's selling Graeme Revell's luxury 
Hollywood mansion with 46 bathrooms and a 
two-headed-baby-shaped swimming pool, 
which tickled me because in the old days 
Graeme - then known as 'Operator' of 
Surgikal Penis Klinik - used to kip on my 
settee in a squat in South London. Then 
Robin decided he was Napoleon and came up 
with the CD title Perfidious Albion. Then 
Randy got some scrabble letters and 
rearranged the letters to come up with 
Oedipus Brain Foil mi Build A Poison Fire. 
Then Soleilmoon rearranged the letters of 
Randy's name for the artwork by 'mistake' 
and it all had to be printed again. It was 
Soleilmoon's top-selling CD. 

WA / take it this was a slightly different 
approach to how you've worked with 
Caroline K and Charlotte Bill in the past! 

NIGEL I worked with them differently. 

When I worked with Caroline we'd swap 
over tasks a lot - in who did what 
compositionally. I tended to do the final 
edits. Charlotte's contribution to Nocturnal 
Emissions music was she did two or three 
short 'raw material' improvisations on the 
flute and oboe which I sampled, mutated and 
recycled in umpteen hundred different ways, 
over several albums. Apart from that, she 
concentrated exclusively on her film work, 
which she seems to be doing quite well with. 


Projector SE7ENTH 

WA What would you define as consensus 
reality ? 

NIGEL The fuzzy belief system promoted 
and exploited by most media organisations 
and politicians. Noam Chomsky has an angle 
on it in his book Manufacturing Consent It's a 
call for sceptical enquiry really. I also enjoy 
things that are on the fringe of believability 
and I play with notions of 'truth' and 'fiction' 
in Network News. Remind readers that I'm 
not Christian Militia, a Third Positionist, an 
anarchist or a UFO nut. I'm just plain Nigel 
out of the Emissions. 

WA When you played live at. the Garage. / 
was quite surprised that, you were doing the 
vocal stuff, as / was expecting a fairly droney 
instrumental set. 

NIGEL Oh that. Oh yes, it was a bit like 
when Dylan went electric and they all 
shouted 'Judas' at the Free Trade Hall in 
Manchester in that book by C.P. Lee, 
formerly of Alberta Y Los Trios Paranoias. 

WA / ha ven 't heard anything by you since 
ooh... The World Is My Womb, that has had 
any lyrical contribution... which is a bit of a 
shame in some ways. Obviously you're never 
going to be competing with Placido Domingo 
or Barry White in vocal terms, but you 
still-manage to 'vocalise' with utmost 
conviction if not technical prowess, notably 
on the improvised addition of '... and don't 
call me a wanker, you wanker' to the live 
version of 'No Sacrifice!' / just wondered if 
the set at the Garage might be an indication 
of an impending return to the microphone / 

NIGEL That improvisation was me dealing 
with a heckler. I've been back on the mic. for 
nearly 2 years now, for live shows, just none 
of it has surfaced in recordings yet. I'm doing 
more of it. What you saw at The Garage was 
a remix of the old songs, mostly. But I've 
umpteen DATs full of new stuff to work on. 
I've just laid down some vocals on an 
avant-garde country and western album that 
I'm working on with Robin Storey. Perhaps 
the first of a new genre. 

WA Who and where do you think your 
audience is! I gather from what you've said 
that the UK in general hasn 't been especially 
supportive. 

NIGEL I'm signed to Soleilmoon, a small but 
very good American record label. I used to 
have reasonable circulation in the UK many 
years ago, but I think the network of 
independent shops isn't what it used to be. 

But then, it's only a little island that we're 
living on, and the kids all want Playstations 
these days. When I went to New York, 
people knew who I was, which was nice. They 
all love me in Germany too. As you can 
imagine, whenever I'm there it's a non-stop 
shagathon. 

Thanks to Nigel Ayers for his 
correspondence, patience and persistence in 
following extended trains of thought in 
directions which provided many entertaining 
and illuminating answers to questions I hadn't 
actually asked. 

The bulk of the Nocturnal Emissions back 
catalogue is available for the monetary 
equivalent of your first born child from 
collector's record shops. Recent albums at 
more reasonable prices are available from 
Earthly Delights, who also sporadically 
produce NEtwork NEws magazine which 


issue 2000 

collects further esoteric and eccentric 
thoughts of Mr Ayers. 

Send an SAE or IRC to: Earthly Delights, 

! PO BOX 2. Lostwithiel, Cornwall, PL23 
OYY, UK. 

xxxxxxxxxxxx 

Nocturnal Emissions 
Discography 
xxxxxxxxxxxx 

Vinyl 

Tissue of Lies LP (Sterile 1981) 

Fruiting Body LP (Sterile 1981) 

Drowning in a Sea of Bliss LP (Sterile 1 983) 

Viral Shedding LP (Illuminated 1 983) 
Befehlsnotscand LP (Earthly Delights 1983) 

Chaos (live) LP (CFC 1984) 

Shake Those Chains Rattle Those Cages LP (Sterile 
1984) 

No Sacrifice 1 2" (Sterile 1 984) 

Songs Of Love And Revolution LP (Sterile 1 985) 

The World is My Womb LP (Earthly Delights 1 987) 
Spiritflesh LP (Earthly Delights 1988) 

Stoneface LP (Parade Amoureuse 1 989) 

Beyond Logic Beyond Belief LP (Earthly Delights 
1990) 

Energy Exchange LP (Earthly Delights 1991) 

Da Dum 7" (Parade Amoureuse 1 989) 

Mouth of Babes LP (Earthly Delights 1992) 

The Quickening LP (Earthly Delights 1993) 
Imaginary Time LP (Soleilmoon) 

ABC (alien black cat) 7" ( 1 998) 

Compact Discs 

Stoneface / Spiritflesh (Dark Vinyl 1 989) 

Invocation of the Beast Gods (Staalplaat 1 990) 
Tissue of Lies - Revised (Dark Vinyl 1 990) 

Cathedra! (Musica Maxima Magnetica 1991) 

Mouth of Babes (Soleilmoon 1991) 

Viral Shedding (Dark Vinyl 1992) 

Songs of Love and Revolution (Dark Vinyl 1 992) 
Befehlsnotstand (Dark Vinyl 1992) 

Blasphemous Rumours (Staalplaat 1 992) 

Drowning in a Sea of Bliss (Touch 1 992) 

Magnetised Light (Musica Maxima Magnetica 1993) 
Glossalalia (Soleilmoon 1994) 

Binary Tribe (Staalplaat 1 994) 

Duty Experiment (Soleilmoon 1995) 

Friction and Dirt (Staalplaat 1 996) 

Autonomia (Soleilmoon 1996) 

Tharmunncrape an 'goo (Soleilmoon 1997) 

Sunspot Activity (Soleilmoon 1 997) 

Practical Time Travel ( Earthly Delights 1998) 
Omphalos! (Solei I moon 1 998) 

The World is my Womb (Soleilmoon 1999) 
Electropunk Karaoke (Earthly Delights 2000) 

Collaborations 

The Beauty of Pollution (with C.C.C.C.) ( 1 997) 
Morocco (with Expose Your Eyes) ( 1 998) 

Spanner Thru Ma Beatbox LP (Earthly Delights 
1 987?) (Nigel Ayers) 

Oedipus Brain Foil 3 x CD (Soleilmoon 1 999) 
(Nigel Ayers, Randy Greif, Robin Storey) 

Mesmeric Enabling Device (Soleilmoon 1 999) (Nigel 
Ayers, John EveraTI, Mick Harris) 

Transgenic 'Horsey/Bellbov' (7" single) (Electric 
Transfusion 1999) (Nigel Ayers) 

Transgenic (Soleilmoon 2000) (Nigel Ayers) 

The Invisible Universe (Soleilmoon 2000) (Nigel 
Ayers and Robin Storey) 


53 



The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 

& NOSTRUMS $ STRATAGEMS & 
GIDGETS ® AND & GADGETS ® 



Kaffe Matthews gffg.' 

CD Ceciie 

ANNETTE WORKS AWCD0003 
CD 

This* following on from her previous 
CDs Ann and Bea , is naturally enough 
the third in a series of recordings by 
the very able Matthews - who's highly 
valued as a free violinist in improvising 
circles. However the Ann and Bea 
CDs (so I have read) actually feature 
progressively less violin playing, and by | 
the time we check in here at stage 
Ciciie there’s very iittle of it at all! 

Instead, Matthews plays the 
self-appointed role of a 'live convertor 
on the case', performing extensive live 
reprocessing of sounds, no doubt 
using the LiSa (Live Sampling) software! 
which she has made all her very own. 
interesting that Phil Durrant is another! 

UK improv violinist who is also heavily! 
into live reprocessing (of himself and 
of others playing), and equally interesting that 
Kaffe Matthews has her own voice entirely 
distinct from his. It's the artist behind the 
paintbrush that counts, not the paintbrush - 


«, >•* ♦ 


* « 


A************** 

#♦*•*••«** ••• • 
u. » * * * * • * * ♦ * # • * • 
<***«*•***• •••« 

**««»*•♦** 

» • «*•***•»•**## 


IP* ««****» 

#**»«** «k 


• *»»*• Jr- ‘ • .*■ — *i> 

• ••••# ,-m~ , --V? r ■ * •' 

N’/.'/.-iU * - 

«***••»,*« * * * * ' * 

even when that paintbrush is a sumptuous 
electronic tool like this one... 

In three long suites (recorded in London, 
Oslo and Chicago) Matthews delivers an 
unfailingly excellent and intense barrage of 


* m * * * simply beautiful noisy music. It can be a 
»«•-;» devastating rush of closelv-edited noises 
, to form a continuous tornado wind of 
, * # , * * sound, or a softly crackling passage of 
»*.*.*»« static. Some of it is as fast as a jet plane, 
• » » .1 some is slow and weird, like some 
. «*» bespectacled intellectual worrying away 
» * •*♦ *#' at an algebra problem. Perhaps we 
« * , * „ * y should be stressing the live / real-time 
. * , * . * J aspect of the work, rather than 
* * a stressing the eiectronic-ness of it, 

because it's in her quick-thinking and 
intuitive movements that Matthews 
truly shines as a gifted and hard-working 
creator. If you ask me, any buffoon can 
tinker with their material in a studio 
until it achieves that overcooked 
perfection they so desire, but it takes 
real guts to take on the forces of 
unprocessed noise and wrestle with 'em 
iive, in the amphitheatre surrounded by 
sweaty grunts (indeed it seems that 
often the noise of the audience 
themselves also get sampled into the 
warp and woof of the music), and this plucky 
musician manages to pin the opponent to the 
mat more than once. And it's not simply 
testosterone-driven feedback-feasting, much 
as I love that scene too! Matthews is turning 
in real craft, every jolting explosion and manic 



54 


The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 



Jesse Paul Miller 

[Secret Records] 

USA, FIRE BREATHING TURTLE NO 
NUMBER 7" VINYL SINGLE (1997) 

What an utterly fascinating single. I played this 
late at night and without warning, suddenly 
noticed I'd stopped breathing for three 
minutes. What a remote and haunting sound. 
Imagine the world utterly quiet and still, 
because it's thousands of years after the end 
of the world. Imagine that all that's left of our 
so-called civilisation is fragments of trash, 
scraps of newspapers, amounting to a few 
shattered pieces of incoherent gibberish. A 
bleak view that, so let's try a more positive 
one. Imagine a time machine fetching back 
totally distorted and virtually unreadable 


Enter the world of Adam 
Bohman... through a doorway 
of sound. Another beguiling 
and baffling record from 
Paradigm, another in Clive 
Graham's ongoing project to 
present utterly new and 
unusuai listening experiences 
to the unsuspecting public. 

The music side is 
represented by a handful of 
Bohman's live solo 
performances, where he 
makes an eerie range of scraping, 
groaning and clattery tinkly noises with 
his devices. Very little in the way of 
traditional musical instruments I 
suspect judging by the array of 
interesting junk pictured on the cover 
here. The ghost of Michael Prime 
appears on some tapes of him playing 
the Hammond organ on one very 
successful track. Both Prime and 
Bohman are members of the reliably 
excellent improv-noise-tape combo, 
Morphogenesis. 

The words component is the more 
eccentric aspect to this disc. I guess it 
amounts to a bunch of 


images from the past, or from the future - 
lacking the skills to decode them, we are left 
with atomised information, that we must 
reconstruct as best we can. 

Sonic archaeology. This is what you'll hear on 
this extremely unsettling little record. Yet 
there's no secret to the 'secret records' - the 
construction and execution of this sculpture / 
installation crossover work is made plain on 
the sleevenotes: 'Secret records are cast from 
found vinyl records in epoxy resin. Found 
objects are layered in the translucent epoxy 
as it sets. The resulting epoxy record has 
inverted grooves. Each secret record is 
unique in appearance and source mould. They 
are an unknown collaboration.' It's more than 
just a post-modern deconstruction of the 
record player. The key word here just might 
be 'translucent', because (unlike others I 


Adam Bohman 

Music and Words 

PARADIGM PD09 CD (1999) 


loop qualifies as a fully embroidered, 
triple-fired, hand-painted work of art. 

In Resonance magazine (Vol 6 No 2) 

Matthews enthused about her lovely toy, the 
LiSa device and all the peripherals associated 
with it. The software was designed in an 
Amsterdam studio by Frank Balde and the 
great Michel Waisvisz, he whose 'crackle 
board' turns up on a Derek Bailey LP and 
who played a strange monophonic synth with 
Steve Lacy (and others) in 1 974 (see the CD 
Emanem 4024). The possibilities this 
technology opens up inspire Kaffe Matthews: 
'As a process for making new music as we 
end the 20th century, this seems an optimistic 
path to be taking. A whole music, that plays in 
sound but makes pictures, that crosses 
borders, that is rich and new, is active and 
involving not mere spectacle; 
that is made through the place 
and the people, there, then. 

Now this seems to be something 
worth doing'. And is it worth 
hearing, too? In spades!!! 

ED PINSENT 


From Annette Works, PO 
Box 14077, London NI6 5WF 
www. annetteworks. demon, co. 
uk 


Limpe Fuchs 
NurMar Mus 

GERMANY, STREAMLINE 
1016 CD (1998) 

The second CD by Limpe Fuchs 
to be issued by Streamline, and a 
very good one it is too. Here 
she plays a mixture of 'real' 
instruments along with the more 
unconventional range of 
instruments - some of which, 
like the brilliant ballast string 
instruments, were developed by 
Paul Fuchs, her husband. Her 
percussion battery is no less 
singular; it includes tuned stones 
(The Serpentinit Stones), sheets 
of bronze, pieces of oak 
fashioned into wood blocks, and 
heavy bronze bars fixed on a 
long piano wire and suspended 
from a broad bronze drum. 

Metai, wood and stone - how 
elemental can you get? On some 
tracks she's joined by George 
Karger on the bass, and Thomas 
Korpiun on percussion, and 
together with her bizarre vocal 
stylings and dripping water solos they create a 
species of dark, slow jazz music which hasn't 
been dared since Eric Dolphy recorded the 
unforgettable 'Warp and Woof in the early 
1960s. 


Limpe has sure come quite a way since she 
took part in the Anima-Sound sessions (see 
elsewhere this issue), and this CD isn't by any 
means as wild as that early record, but she 
has succeeded in finding and developing a 
totally unique voice and (on the evidence of 
this particular issue) never failed to deliver 
disquieting, solemn and challenging music, 
entirely on her own terms. 


could name who make such a fetish out of 
rotating vinyl on a gramophone, in both the 
fields of avant-garde and mainstream 
entertainment music) the work of Mr Miller 
transcends the mechanics by which it's 
produced, immediately, totally and without 
question. It's a transparent process, plugging 
you instantly into the idea through sound. It's 
an innovation, not just a novelty. The listener 
is not merely interested, but astounded. 

What are the foreign bodies pressed within 
these moulds? Regina Hackett wrote of 
'mismatched buttons, wavy streams of human 
hair, cancelled tickets, strips of wallpaper, 
maps and butter wrappers. These thick, 
slightly warped circles are time capsules of 
memory, loss and desire.' She was writing 
about one of Miller's art installations at the 
Seattle Art Museum, connecting 
this work to John Cage and to a 
father of American absurdity, 
Robert Rauschenberg. The 
checklist of debris from the 
streets could have been made 
into a powerful collage by Kurt 
Schwitters, but already modern 
art is beyond that - passed into 
an unfeeling age where the 
preservation of transient garbage 
happens by accident, and means 
nothing. The epoxy resin of 
these Secret Records has 
become amber, preserving 
insects from another age. 
Listener-scientists, learn from 
this! 


ED PINSENT 


PO Box 45243, Seattle, 
Washington 98/45, USA 


ED PINSENT 

&&&&&&& 



The Sound Projector 5E7ENTH issue 2000 



semi-documentary recordings which are 
the accumulated detritus from Bohman's 
hours spent compulsively taping his 
mental jottings on a hand-held cassette 
recorder. Through his daily life, he 
pauses to record observations on his 
surroundings or events. We had a 
sample of this (the 'Belgium Barrage') on 
Clive Graham's first Variations 
compilation. What emerges? Quick 
shopping list 

• Family life - the claustrophobia of a 
family Christmas. His mum tellingly 
turning off a tape player because it was 
near to driving her mad. 

• Marked interest in food, and the 
preparation of food. A pre-war recipe 
for a fruit fool clipped from a 
newspaper is painstakingly read aloud. 

• Peripatetic journeys through the 
drabbest corners of South London, 
highly reminiscent of my fave films 
London and Robinson in Space, both by 
Patrick Keillor. Except that unlike 
Keillor, Bohman has no political agenda 
whatsoever - he's just observing. Also 
reminiscent of Viv Stanshall's field 
recordings, except Bohman doesn't stop 
to talk to people to garner their 
opinions on Shirts, nor to ask them 'The 
Question'. 

• A tremendous precision of mind and 
attention to detail - some of it trivial 
detail, about what people are wearing, 
the hour of the day, the precise 
wording of a rather boring shop sign. 
Cornell Woolrich wrote his mystery 
novels this way, and it drove me round 
the bend. In one of them {Deadline At 
Dawn) it became essential to 
reconstruct, through minute trace 
evidence, the exact movements of a 
character who had vacated a room two 
hours ago. Horrible - it brings out the 
existentialist in me. As to the triviality, 
Bohman has the honour of nearly 


becoming Viv Stanshall's 
neighbour in 'My Pink 
Half Of The Drainpipe' - 
was it a Tuesday or a 
Wednesday? This disc is 
shaping up to be an 
avant-garde answer 
record to the Bonzos. 

• A charming turn of 
phrase now and then, a 
passer-by referred to as 
a 'gentleman' - how many 
people talk like this any 
more? 

The compulsive 
fascination I'm displaying 
with this record is 
probably an acquired 
taste, but you won't have 
heard anything like it 
before. The added bonus 
is the wobbly sound 
caused by Bohman's cheap tape 
recorder running out of battery power, 
and the disjunctive effects of all the 
pause-button edits...as you'll know this 
is how some of Captain Beefheart's 
accapella songs on Trout Mask Replica 
were put together. As indicated in the 
sleeve notes, this adds a kind of poor 
man's musique concrete dimension to 
the work. 

One listen and you'll know more about 
the inner mind of Mr Bohman than 
perhaps you had bargained for. 

ED PINSENT 

From paradigm@gn.apc.org 


electronic instruments, and, never satisfied 
with cruddy venue gear, built his own 
preamps for the 1 986 piece at the Houston 
Astrodome. On one track he plays 
microphones with a butane torch! And I love 
the sense of slight absurdity to the work - the 
use of an amplified slinky, the Audobon bird 
calls, the amplified bicycle, the soda straw and 
plastic cups.. .he has a sense of humour 
without being wacky. 

The ideas are great - I only wish this actual 
recorded document were more enjoyable 
and rewarding as music. The sounds we hear 
here must be only the residue of a greater 
event - the Astrodome one for example was 
largely visual as well as aural, involving 
'interplay of large sounds coming from very 
small hand-held instruments inside a huge 
reverberant space'. Sadly, it doesn't quite 
translate to the small scale of the 
home-listening CD. The sounds become 
shapeless, limp, and meandering - very slow 
and aimless - and ultimately irritating. I 
wonder if the artist has spent too much time 
on the staging of grand-scale events, and not 
enough time on composing music. That said I 
do like the third track, 1 994's 'Oid Friends 
with Pitch to MIDI', but mainly because 
there's more real playing on it - synth and 
guitar contributions of his old improv / jazz 
buddies, Tom Hamilton and Bertrand Moon 
respectively. Weirdly, their work reminds me 
of Derek Bailey when he played with Michel 
Waisvisz. 

Still, Lerman's clearly an unusual and 
dedicated artist - and I feel sure that if I saw 
his work in the correct context, staged in a 
large venue, then i would be fuiiy rewarded. 
And if you want to know how to make a 
'Plinky' of your own - you need to buy this 
CD! 

ED PINSENT 


Richard 

Lerman 

A Matter of Scale 
and other pieces 

USA, ANOMALOUS 
RECORDS LERMAN 3 
(1997) 

A collection of four concert 
pieces from this big-thinking 
installation / performance 
artist from America, who 
builds all his own instruments 
and has a very individualistic 
approach to staging his work. 
Reading the notes to 
Lerman's methods, on paper 
it all looks wonderful - he has 
an impressive sense of scale 
and how to deploy 
performers in extremely 
unusual ways. Like grumpy 
old Stockhausen, he makes 
demands on the venues he 
plays in and challenges the 
conventions of ordinary 
microphone placement; in 
1 98 1 's 'Entrance Music' we've 
got mics placed '20 feet up in 
the tall fly space of the 
theatre' at the Netherlands 
Cultural Centre in Utrecht. 
Lerman builds his own 



56 



32P25 


4PI2A 


4PI3A 


32P28 


0.8 35 ; 


4PI4A 


Shadowbug 4 

Tiny Voices of 
Love and Fear 

USA, SOLEILMOON 
RECORDINGS 
SOL79CD, CD (1999) 


Randy Greif. Randy Greif. 
Randy Greif. How do I 
know this name? 

Shadowbug 4 is the banner 
under which he's working 
for the purposes of this 
CD. I’d heard of him from 
somewhere before Oedipus 
Brain Foil, on which he 
collaborated with Robin 
Storey and Nigel Ayers. 

The press release claims he 
is 'best known for his six 
hour-long 

psycho-atmospheric setting 
of Alice in Wonderland', 
but that doesn't ring any 
bells either. I asked my 
friend Shaun who knew of 
some great and fine 
endeavour which had made 
the man's name, but the 
titles and nature of 
whatever it was remained 
just a scant distance from 
the tip of his tongue. We 
spent an entire evening 
going over our memories 
with a fine toothed comb, 
to little avail. It probably 
doesn't matter but it's the 
same as when one is seized 
by a sudden irrational need 
to recall the name of the 
ginger one in Brookside 
whose brother was a 
squaddie, for example. 

Randy Greif s music on this 
CD is similarly difficult to 
pin down with a written 
account. It feels dark and 
heavily orchestrated. 
There's a lot going on. it's 
iargely electronic, or at 
ieast derived from heavily 
treated sources, while 
remaining resolutely 
organic in terms of the 
progression and 
development of the 
instrumental tracks which 
seem to unfold and grow 


to 422 "G" 32P26 ' | 0.586" I "G 

to S3 1 "H" I 32P27 . . S' I 0.713" | "H 


The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2 


RUN of the ARROW - A SEQUENCER bursts its ARTERIES FOR 

★ ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★-A ★YOUR PLEASURE aka ★★★★★★★★ 

THE 

+ ++CRACKLING + + + 


XWA xVWA 
XW\ /WA MA 


ETHER 


57 





The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


like flowers, rather than programmes. I'm 
reminded a little of the composition, although 
not the end result, of My Life In The Bush Of 
Ghosts With that album's broad savannahs 
supplanted by forest interiors so dense that 
you may as well be underground, the 
electronic undergrowth teeming with life. 
There seems to be a tribal undercurrent 
running through some of this, which is 
emphasised on 'You Can Come Down' where 
swooping electronica and treated half-voices 
dance around an extended bout of bongo 
bashing. It’s a track worthy of Tribu, as 
covered elsewhere in this issue. Hypnotically 
primal and, I don't doubt, quite capable of 
conjuring up the odd passing esoteric God 
under the appropriate circumstances. But 
then this is equally true 
of Tiny Voices of Love 
and Fear as a whole, 
and it bears witness to 
Randy Greifs ability 
that all this 
atmosphere, as dense 
as molasses, comes 
from music completely 
unassisted by silly 
sleeve notes bogged 
down with magical 
symbols or references 
to the usual occult 
suspects. If any of those 
theory-laden black 
clothes-sporting groups 
had ever come up with 
something as powerful 
and evocative as this, 
then the industrial 
sections of those 
collectors' record 
shops might actually be 
worth taking a pog at every once in a while. 

WAR ARROW 

Tlon Uqbar 

La Bola Perdida 

NETHERLANDS, STAALPLAAT 
STCD139 CD (1999) 

A fruitful collaboration between two French 
bands, Internal Fusion and Disaccord Majeur, 
this is Ambient music with an edge. The CD's 
five long pieces convey an impressive range of 
rhythms and atmospheres, reminiscent of 
Zoviet France in their layered accretion of 
organic detail. All of the tracks, except the 
closing 'Mylodon', are similarly structured. 
Ominous ambient sounds - distorted drones, 
watery splashes, radio interference - frame 
hypnotic looped rhythms and vivid 
instrumental strokes. Traces of 
ethnic-sounding percussion and harsher 
metallic collisions mingle with diverse human 
voices (European speech, middle Eastern 
chant) to form a complex, involving 
soundscape. Eventually the intricate rhythms 
come to predominate, forming sharp 
contours inside the listener's head. More 
ambient than the other pieces, but no less 
absorbing, 'Mylodon' ends the album on a 
reflective note. Its restrained beats, 
disembodied voices and gently vibrant drone 
are soothing and delightful. 

RICHARD REES JONES 



Stylus 

The Last Seaweed 
Collecting Hut at Freshwater 
West 

OCHRE RECORDS OCH012LCD CD 
(1999) 

A quite fine and distinguished effort from 
Dafydd Morgan aka Stylus here. Unusual 
theme, and unusual results. The title refers to 
a highly singular feature of 19th century rural 
life, now vanished - may sound far-fetched but 
it seems seaside-dwelling folk used to gather 
seaweed, to dry it out in seaweed collecting 
huts and sell it on, to bake something called 
laver bread. Poverty makes us do strange 


things. A surviving example of a seaweed 
collecting hut is now a museum piece (at 
Pembrokeshire Coast National Park), the 
photograph on the cover a vision from 
another age. The music delivers the promised 
unusual results too - frequently successful in 
evoking that very definite sense of location it 
strives for. This effect isn’t achieved just 
through applying layers of spray-on 
atmosphere which comes ready-made 
through most electronic works these days - 
instead, it's a carefully assembled stream of 
loops, drones and synthesised wind effects, all 
suggesting a mysterious and splendid journey 
back in time. 

ED PINSENT 


90° South 

The Barrier Silence 

OCHRE RECORDS OCH014LCD CD 
(1999) 

The folks at Ochre Records continue their 
mission to bring quality electronica to the 
people with this impressive CD by Kevin Fox, 
aka 90° South. Fox namechecks labelmates 
EAR on the insert, and he shares Sonic 
Boom's fondness for vintage equipment; 
instruments used include valve amplifiers, 
Stylophones and ‘various mechanical and 
electronic toys’. Thankfully, however, such 
gimmickry is relegated to a minor role. 
Instead it’s the Fender electric piano that 
predominates, its warm emotional timbre 
lending a quiet strength to these nine mostly 
instrumental pieces. 


As the artwork makes clear, this is 
programme music. The sleeve note is an 
extract from a poem by Edward Wilson, the 
chief scientific officer on the 1911-12 
Antarctic expedition, and there is a strong 
sense of exploration and discovery in the 
music. The unexplored landscape is 
evocatively described through the sparing use 
of bass and percussion. Fluid guitar and piano 
patterns depict the human presence, their 
attenuation hinting at the insignificance of the 
explorers within the vastness of the 
landscape. 

The mood is mostly quiet and sober, evoking 
stillness and contemplation rather than 
excitement or danger. Only on 'Streamliner' 
does Fox break into a sweat, pumping out a 
bustling groove reminiscent of Stereolab. 

Occasionally, as on ‘ITOM’, Fox's debt to 
Sonic Boom (in his Spectrum incarnation) 
becomes rather too obvious, as a burbling 
synth threatens to overwhelm the guitar and 
piano. But this is a rare lapse of judgement. 
Otherwise, the tone of the album is summed 
up in the marvellous ‘Winter Road Movie’, 
with acoustic and electric elements darting 
among each other in vivid and highly 
expressive interplay. 

RICHARD REES JONES 

Vidna Obmana and 
Serge Devadder 

The Shape of Solitude 

AUSTRIA, MULTIMOOD RECORDS 
MRC027 CD (1999) 

Vidna Obmana is a Belgian sound sculptor 
whose recent Motives for Recycling, a remix 
of work by Asmus Tietchens, was reviewed in 
the last Sound Projector. On this occasion he 
teams up with guitarist Serge Devadder for an 
hour's worth of fairly run-of-the-mill Ambient 
fare. 

The CD opens with some virtuoso guitar 
playing from Devadder. His technique may 
be faultless, but the effect is soporific. 
Interwoven with these tasteful pluckings are 
Obmana's more testing manipulations, which 
gradually come to dominate the album. 

‘Perceptual Edge’ sees Devadder's playing 
move up a notch, his intricate picking 
complemented nicely by Obmana's sustained 
washes of sound. The lengthy ‘A Stinging 
Memory Of Shared Skin’ is the album's high 
point; the heavily treated guitar floats 
malevolently around the listener, producing 
an eerie, alien sound world. This ominous 
mood continues in the album's effective 
closing piece, ‘Leaving This Place Again'. 

Over the course of an hour, however, 
interest palls. The above highlights aside, it all 
sounds so terribly inert, its aimlessness 
evidence of a lack of imagination and spirit 
rather than any kind of contemplative 
detachment. 

RICHARD REES JONES 

Mount Vernon Arts Lab 

E for Experimental 

OCHRE RECORDS OCH013LCD CD 
(1999) 

Hoots mon! I was all set to give this dinky 
little CD a hard time - but in fact it's 



58 



The Sound 

entertaining enough and to the right pair of 
ears surely quite irresistible. Don't let the 
title kid you. As musical activities go, it's quite 
some way from truly 'experimental', but as 
pastiches of avant-garde heritage go, it's 
nowhere near as smarmy as the kitschy 
dribblings of the ghastly Stereolab. As the sole 
mad scientist of the 'Lab 1 , Drew Mulholland 
deservedly occupies his own field of research 
with these jolly electronic tunes and 
atmospheric sounds. Equipped with an 
impressive collection of retro equipment, 

Drew has built up an extensive resume of 
releases which are collected here from a 
series of long unavailable EPs and singles on 
labels such as Earworm, Via-Satellite, 
Enraptured, Trunk, Vesuvius and After Hours 
- with added live 
recordings and demo 
tapes. It's fair to say 
he wears some of his 
groovy influences on 
his sleeve, 

incorporating by the 
power of suggestion 
pop culture 
references which are 
guaranteed to trigger 
the automatic 
wow-factor from 
audiences even 
before the music is 
heard - and these 
include the 
Radiophonic 
Workshop, Suicide, 

Tangerine Dream 
and any piece of 
musical hardware 
that contains valves, 
oscillators, or 
analogue circuitry. Nothing wrong with this 
of course. Even the title 'E For Experimental' 
might be part of the same nostalgic alphabet 
that starts with 'A For Andromeda', the 
legendary BBC TV science fiction series that 
no-one's ever seen, but which everyone 
somehow 'remembers' as being absolutely 
brilliant. The reason for this appears to be 
because it's one of the many broadcasts good 
enough to have been wiped from the BBC 
archive. For my other comments on 'false 
memory implants', see elsewhere. 

ED PINSENT 



Nigel Avers, John 
Everall and Mick Harris 

Mesmeric Enabling Device 

USA, SOLEILMOON RECORDINGS SOL 
85 CD (1999) 

I'm starting to wonder if we shouldn’t change 
the name of the magazine to The Soleilmoort 
Projector. Here's yet another one from the 
label, to go with the other 500 reviewed 
herein. This time it's a collaboration between 
he of Nocturnal Emissions, Mick Harris of 
Scorn and John Everall who seems to have 
been in most bands formed over the last 
twenty years, but I remember best as one the 
few writers for the late Music From The 
Empty Quarter magazine that I could be 
bothered to read. Nigel does things to pieces 
supplied by John and Mick, who in turn do 
things to some of Nigel's stuff. 


Projector SE7ENTH 

It should come as no surprise to anyone that 
this isn't the easiest of music to dance to, 
beyond doing the Standing Still, and neither 
could it be described as a relaxing Ambient 
drone. Although nothing overt or sudden 
leaps out from the vast fields of reverb, it's 
too dark to be comforting. If I might digress 
briefly, i once had the pleasure of knowing 
Tommy Docherty. Not the football bloke, but 
a less famous namesake who dabbled in 
making weird music on cassette. His finest 
moment was an eight or nine minute track 
called 'Words Cannot Describe', recorded 
with hopelessly humble equipment and 
somehow utilising sounds echoing along the 
interior of an enormous aluminium pipeline 
he'd found somewhere. The eerie sustained 


roar he'd produced bypassed the limitations 
of his recording equipment, and resulted in 
one of the few pieces of music I've heard 
which I was genuinely unable to play with the 
lights off, unless overcome with some 
perverse desire to shit myself. Although I'm 
older now and less inclined to be spooked by 
such things, there are parts of Mesmeric 
Enabling Device which strongly remind me of 
Tommy Docherty's masterpiece, certainly in 
terms of power and tonality. 

Mind you, it isn't all variations on a slab, as 
the above might suggest. Among the 
cavernous expanses we find a few elements of 
the unexpected. There's some distant tinkly 
melody on the second of the seven untitled 
tracks, which actually rather detracts from 
the general atmosphere. Later on we get 
random heartbeats and a rhythm that suggests 
someone's typewriter has got sick of all those 
words and is auditioning for the office 
supplies Junglist posse. It's a rhythm, but not 
really a beat. Mr Ayers seems to do well 
working in collaboration, and this holds its 
own alongside previous efforts with C.C.C.C., 
Robin Storey, and Randy Greif. I haven't tried 
listening with lights off as yet. It hardly seems 
a worthwhile experiment. By the end of the 
last track even a brightly lit room with the 
midday sun streaming through bay windows 
will seem like the setting for an H. P. 

Lovecraft finale. The protagonist finally tracks 
down the subterranean horrors responsible 
for the cavity wall insulation of the house he 
inherited from that uncle, the one nobody 
liked to talk about. 

WAR ARROW 


issue 2000 

87 Central 

87 Central 

NETHERLANDS, ERS 12/03 VINYL LP 
(1999) 

Of great interest for the fine effects achieved 
by the electronic re-processing and 
manipulation of a cello. This is done by 87 
Central - in reality Jeff Carey - working with 
feedback loops and a big mixing board, from 
acoustic sources. On the long track on side 
two, 'Kalimba Cello System', he is not merely 
showing off his equipment and indulging his 
technique - rather, he creates a quite 
beautiful passage of slow music, understated 
and filled with nostalgic longing, which stays 
pretty much in the same place for just the 
right length of time. It starts out near-empty 
and only when you reach the bittersweet 
ending do you realise the surprising number 
of minimal accretions it has gathered. 500 
years in the life of a seashell, witnessed in 15 
minutes. You won't want it to ever end! A 
limited vinyl pressing of 500 copies only on 
this Staalplaat imprint. 

ED PINSENT 



Electroshock 

I Woke Up Brain Dead 

GERMANY, UTON CD 14 CD (1999) 

Five young German men get together in the 
studio and concoct this contemporary 
mish-mash of sound experiments for our 
delectation. Hey listeners, guess what? It's a 
'challenging' melange of jazz and electronic 
music - as if nobody ever thought of doing 
that before. The chief drawback is that the 
alto saxophonist Jeffrey Morgan, whose 
blurtish brass lines decorate the surface of 
the electronic backdrops, is about as 
distinctive as a wet teabag lying limp in a 
catering skip, and has about as much swing 
feeling as a meeting of your local Mothers 
Union. But hey, let's give the poor fucker a 
chance. If the sax is not to your taste, let your 
ears fell back on the febbo analogue 
electronic noises pooped out by Konrad 
Doppert on the synth, Joker Nies on the 
sampler and Dr Borg mangling his electric 
guitar. And if you think you're in for some 
boredom relief, you're sadly mistaken, 
because this is the kind of unrelieved tedium 
that'll have you marching down to your local 
music shop with a wild gleam in your eye and 
dousing all the Casio keyboards with 
kerosene. Yep, it's a fairly misbegotten 
musical adventure on the whole. Have I 
mentioned Richard Teitelbaum before? Oh, I 
know I have! Now there's a guy you should 
check out - while the world remained largely 
indifferent, he continued to make fantastic 
music, combining his Moog synth with jazz 
sax (mostly that of Anthony Braxton) on 
several LPs in the mid 1970s, while these 
German jokers were still pigging out on 
strudel at their cousin's house. Only if you 
too are feeling 'brain dead' could you stand to 
listen to this ghastly release in its entirety. 

ED PINSENT 

From Helmoho/tstrasse 5, D-5! 145, 

Cologne, Germany 



59 


The Sound 

Bass Communion V 
Muslimgauze 

Bass Communion V 
Muslimgauze 

USA, SOLEILMOON RECORDINGS 
SOL89 CD (1999) 

The title alone excites me with the same 
frisson I once experienced at the prospect of 
a Teen Titans V X-Men comic. Wow! What 
will they get up to having had the obligatory 
superhero punch-up resulting doubtlessly 
from a minor misunderstanding' Will Cyclops 
make moves on the girl with the considerable 
assets? Will Wolverine duff Jericho up for 
being a girl's skipping rope with pink handles? 
The tension! The drama! What form will the 
conflict take? A battle of wits, a few rounds of 
gin rummy, or the more unorthodox 
approach unofficially favoured by cub scouts 
involving clenched fists, a slice of bread and 
dirty thoughts? 

Muslimgauze produced almost exclusively 
rhythmic percussion-based music. I've only 
heard one other CD by Bass Communion, 
which is (if I recall correctly) quite devoid of 
rhythm. Steven Wilson, the grand poobah 
behind the aforementioned name, instead 
seems to favour ethereal atmospheric pieces. 
With these salient facts in mind it seemed not 
unreasonable to expect an album of Mr 
Wilson's organ wizardry accompanied by the 
talking bongos of Mr Jones. In other words, 
two CDs of the respective artists being 
played at the same time. 

This in itself could be good, but whatever 
approach was taken, the end result is much 
greater than the sum of its parts. Much of this 
sounds quite different to the individual 
combatants' own stuff, making it less obvious 
who did what than you'd imagine. Those 
rhythms are there, angle-grinded into a 
variant on drum and bass which just happens 
to turn towards Mecca in prayer a few times 
a day. The tracks herein contain more depth 
and more layers than on recent Muslimgauze 
offerings, with patterns of gritty electronics 
wandering absent-mindedly around the 
rhythms. Each contributor seems to have had 
a profound influence on the other, making for 
a rounded symbiotic whole quite different in 
feel to solo releases by either. In view of what 
I've heard of the last Muslimgauze albums, 
turned out onto CD at a rate that makes the 
newspaper printing industry seem like a 
handmade rural knick-knack operation, this is 
a very good thing. This proves that with a 
little imagination there can be a lot more to 
drum and bass than the black clothes-wearing 
conspiracy theorist bore-core or saggy-arsed 
space fag soundtracks that 90% of the genre's 
enthusiasts seem to think is indicative of their 
inherent superiority over people who actually 
work for a living. 

There is apparently another similar 
collaboration between these two awaiting 
release, which should be eagerly anticipated 
by anyone with functioning ears. It's a shame 
that, for obvious reasons, this is all we're 
likely to get. But even with there being little 
more where this came from, we at least now 
know that the bulk of Bryn Jones' last 
recordings weren't entirely lacking 
inspiration. It might be worth looking out for 
this Bass Communion feller in future. A name 
to watch methinks. A thoroughly classy CD 


Projector SE7ENTH 

which will thrill the discerning listener. Also, 
there's some fish on the cover. Which is nice. 

WAR ARROW 

More Muslimgauze records are unspooled 
in THE DRONING ONES section 
A double CD by Bass Communion is within 
Chris Atton's column 


Zircon and the Burning 
Brains 

«Cortex!» 

ULTIMATE TRANSMISSIONS UTCD 001 
CD (1999) 

ZBB were Steve and Alan Freeman, working 
with the help of their friend Nigel Harris. The 
Freemans have carved a rather unique niche 
for themselves in the world of 
record-collecting: they own and operate the 
Ultima Thule record shop and mail order 
service in Leicester, reputed to be one of the 
finest emporiums in the world for securing 
original vinyl copies of progressive rock and 
experimental music records. They regularly 
produce Audion, a magazine dedicated to 
collating facts about such music. And they 
issued the enormous Krautrock 
encyclopaedia A Crack In The Cosmic Egg, 
which in terms of its sheer exhaustiveness 
manages to eclipse any other work on the 
subject. 

I was as surprised as anyone to learn that 
they have a history of making their own music 
too. T urns out they have a fair-sized back 
catalogue going back to 1981, and this release 
represents the first CD issue of a cassette 
they originally put out in 1 984. 1 was also 
surprised to find it's quite a creditable 
showing - using some very tasty analogue 
synth sounds, echo effects, tape collage, 
distorted solemn voices (some of them 
speaking in French, for some reason) and a 
fun-loving anything-goes spirit, they succeed 
in creating some genuinely bizarre and 
unsettling, minimalist electronic experiments. 
With their constant growling bass notes and 
strange interruptions of illogical electronic 
blips, these long mysterious pieces don't 
exactly gladden a dispirited mind. They lay 
there in the dark and brood...like some eerie 
pulsating mineral from another planet. 


issue 2000 

The slightly irritating aspect (for this listener) 
is the added commentary - which is written 
by the Freemans themselves, very much in 
the inept style of their Audion magazine. 
They're certainly enthused, but they lapse 
into making lame comparisons very 
frequently. Now I know we do this here at 
The Sound Projector too. In writing, I think 
this technique is permissible 
once in a while to help orient 
the listener, but the 
Freemans do it all the time - 
there's no LP they've heard 
that can't be compared to 
another LP they've heard. 

And it's not always 
meaningful influences they're 
looking for, genuine or 
significant connections; all 
they can discern is similarity 
of sounds. When they start 
applying the same 
'it-sounds-like...' game to 
their own work, I for one 
become a tad suspicious. To 
their credit, the Freemans 
are not afraid of being 
accused of eclecticism. But I 
feel they're pre-empting 
criticism, eliminating any 
work the listener may have 
to do - all the usual suspects 
are trotted out in a dreary 
little checklist for you. This even extends to 
the name of their combo, a cocktail mix 
involving the Polish band SBB, Frank Zappa, 
and a track from the first Tangerine Dream 
LP. And this namechecking doesn't do their 
own music any favours. Once a band claims 
to have been influenced by everything from 
Stockhausen to Suicide to Krautrock to 
Nurse With Wound and Pierre Henry, their 
music can start to assume the proportions of 
a knowing pastiche of all the above. Have 
they learned anything from these musicians, in 
terms of technique, compositional methods, 
creative ideas? Or have they simply 
copycatted the weird sounds from their 
voluminous record collections? 

Well, my advice (to myself) is to put all these 
doubts aside and listen to the music. Remove 
the mental baggage, ignore their somewhat 
high-flown claims, don't even think of reading 
the ghastly fragment of 'poetry' - and chances 
are you're in for a good time. This record 
remains intriguing, fresh and strangely 
compelling. 

ED PINSENT 

Ultima Thule, / Conduit Street, Leicester 
LE2 OJN. UK 



Are 

compilations of 
electronic music 
necessary? 

See over for an appraisal 
of two excellent 
brick-sized digests of 
noise o 



60 



The Sound 

Various Artists 

They've got the whole world 
in their hands 

GERMANY, METHODS TO SURVIVE 
NETWORK SYSTEM SURVIVE 001 2 X 
CD (1999) 

Various Artists 

Modulation and 
Transformation 4 

GERMANY, MULE PLATEAUX MP 3CD 
61 3 X CD (1999) 

Is it my imagination, or is everything 
becoming more excessive these days? Time 
was I thought bulky Sunday Papers were 
frowned upon by Green-inspired idealists, as 
wasting the world's paper resources by 
printing tons of useless 'Lifestyle' supplements 
which nobody ever reads. Nowadays you 
need a pantechnicon to get The Observer 
back to your flat. And CDs, alas, are getting 
thicker, longer, more voluminous. Here are a 
mere two examples of the kind of gargantuan 
home entertainment package the music 
listener is frequently faced with these days - a 
double CD and a triple CD. But this is a case 
where excess genuinely means success. Both 
of these come highly recommended, and, 
erm...for different reasons. 

Compilations - what a daft notion. 

Some time ago when I still used to go 
to art galleries regularly, in the early 
1 980s, it seemed to be de rigeur to 
pack a group exhibition with as many 
artists as possible - at least 50 or 60 
names seemed to be the favoured 
option, with an accompanying 
catalogue as thick as a paperback 
crammed full of pretentious 
statements bolstering the threadbare 
conceits these no-hope, 
never-seen-again daubers. Usually the 
only linking factor - or 'theme' if you 
will - would be that the limners in 
question were all based in the same 
dead-end provincial town. The 
hapless visitor to such a show would 
be faced with an indigestible melange 
of mismatched artistic styles - riotous 
colour-field paintings next to austere 
minimalists, photo-realist Nazis next 
to cod-Surrealist mugs with their 
dumb renderings of 'shocking' images, 
like the Mayor and Corporation 
posing next to a nude lady...you get 
the idea. Visually, this kind of 
ill-conceived array made no sense 
whatsoever and made for an 
unsatisfying experience to your 
eyeballs, besides giving you sore 
tootsies. Yet I recall one lame critic 
defending one such show on the 
grounds that there was 'something for 
everyone here'. That's as maybe, but 
it's like treating the art as a huge 
buffet of food on cocktail trays, and 
the viewer as a snacking yuppy 
moving freely from dish to dish, 
sampling as they may. If you don't like 
anchovies, try the pastrami - there's 
'something for everyone'. Bah! In the end, I 
believe, that sort of approach to art does no 
favours for anyone... 

Somehow, however, just the opposite applies 
to modern compilations of electronic music. 
Here, excess is good - necessary, even. When 


Projector SE7ENTH 

I grab hold of these things nowadays, I want a 
brick-sized digest of noise - as much as I can 
possibly listen to, and if there aren't at least 
30 artists represented I feel cheated! In fact. 

I'd venture to say that compilations like these 
are the best way to steer yourself in to these 
uncharted realms of music, and not just 
because 'you're bound to find something you 
like', as our blithely optimistic art critic 
quoted above might say. No, it's the sheer 
volume of material that makes the difference - 
you can completely immerse yourself and 
wallow in the golden lard, because ingesting a 
Farouk-sized slabette of music like this is like 
travelling the length and breadth of an 
imaginary continent, meeting with the 
indigenous peoples, feeling strange grass 
under your feet, and bathing in foreign waters 
teeming with monstrous fish. Here, mysteries 
can be solved - one track can help explain 
another, in the same way that the influence of 
civilisations on one another can be discerned 
across centuries by anthropologists. Harlan 
Ellison, that pompous science fiction writer, 
did one small favour to the world by 
compiling the Dangerous Visions series - and 
one of his many wordy justifications for the 
schemes that he followed as an editor was 
simply that stories could help sell each other. 
A famous name in a book (Thomas M Disch) 
will help attract attention to a not-so-famous 
name (James Sallis). Through the right 


context, a story will mean a lot more. And 
there are more than enough echoes and 
cross-fertilisations going on these two music 
compilations to keep you occupied for 
months. 

Listening to these things 'blind' is not a crime. 
You don't have to name-check every single 
artist on these discs. I certainly don't intend 


issue 2000 

to - who has the time? Let the experience 
flow over you, and enjoy it for what it is.. .an 
hour of dynamic ebb and flow, filled with 
tension. In time, you might grow to 
appreciate one particular track and identify 
the artist, seek out further examples of their 
work., only to be massively disappointed. You 
could find a whole CD is not necessary, or 
the artist may have moved on to other 
territories anyway. It made a whole lot more 
sense when the context was right. 

The Mille Plateaux compilation, wrapped in a 
fine 'blank' looking package with fold outs and 
cryptic symbols and messages printed on the 
insert, is merely the fourth in a series of 
world-class electronic music compilations 
from a Rolls-Royce label of modern 
electronica, and it features 38 outstanding 
cuts by contemporary artists - the creme de 
la creme! Many splinters of the international 
'scene' are represented. Minimalism from 
Ryoji Ikeda and Noto; cut-ups and skipping 
CDs from Pluramon and Lithops; gallery 
installation art from Achim Wollscheid; 
avant-DJing from Consume and DJ Paedofile, 
DJ Spooky, Mouse on Mars and Marcus 
Schmickler of I0A Musik. Also represented 
are Christophe Charles, Terre Theamlitz, 
SND, Rehberg and Bauer; UK artists Techno 
Animal and Scanner; Japanese noise god 
Masami Akita, with Kouhei Matsunage; Steel, 
Robert Babicz, Gas, Thomas Koner, Panacea, 
Andy Mellwig...the list goes on. I 
guarantee there is not a single dull 
item hereon and it's worth every 
penny - if you can still find a copy. 
Hardly a vocal track in sight, and in 
feet the only voices you hear are 
usually sampled and / or treated - so 
the glacial atmosphere can appear to 
lack a human dimension. Yet to dwell 
for a long time in the land of the 
exotic instrumental can have a very 
calming and mysterious effect on your 
psyche. 

The Methods To Survive one by 
contrast is quite weird and disjunctive 
(in the best possible way), featuring a 
whole string of unreleased tracks by 
Muslimgauze, Masonna, Illusion Of 
Safety, The Vance Orchestra, 

Kingdom Scum, Mlehst, S-Core, Arno 
Peeteres, Michael Wells, Tornow, 
MOWE / Verwerter and others, 
everything packaged together in a 
disruptive, random sequence aiming 
for maximum shock / surprise effect. 
There's noise, drum and bass, 
feedback, jolly synth toons, 
documentary recordings, and large 
segments of the just plain 
unidentifiable. It works - like a dose of 
radium poisoning. I have the 
impression it's some form of gigantic 
art-prank remix networking project by 
The Methods, who are six strange 
young men from East Berlin. It's 
divided up into six sections, framed by 
verite recordings of these jokers 
larking about at a private gathering, 
yet has no coherent structure that I 
can perceive. It's perplexing, a great and 
glorious mess. Oh yes, something for 
everyone here... 

ED PINSENT 

See IN THE ART GALLERY for another 
fabulous huge-o compilation - Tulpas by 
RLW 



61 





62 


An Allegorical Portrait of Roger Bacon - DISINFORMATION ©1997 




Interview By Ed Pinsent 

FRESH FROM HIS SUCCESS CURATING AN INTERNATIONAL MUSIC FESTIVAL 
IN Austria, Otomo Yoshihide landed briefly in London in the Winter of 1999. 
Actually his story is pretty well-known already - if you've read two very good 
interviews one by Ed Baxter in Resonance and one by Clive Bell in The Wire 1 85. 
Since the beginning of the 1990s, through numerous solo projects involving 
an...erm...very innovative use of turntables, live electronics and electric guitar, the 
Japanese musician Otomo Yoshihide has constantly attempted to shock, startle, alarm 
and amaze the listener with an overload of weird juxtapositions, tape edits, strange 
sounds, heart-stopping dynamics and excessive volume. Some recent solo records 
include Digital Tranquilizer, Memory Defacement and Vinyl Tranquilizer - the last 
accurately described by the Metamkine catalogue as 'Rien de tranquille ici, au 
contraire'. This strange and new approach to music-making seemed unprecedented. 
His use of the turntable alone should win him some kind of prize - his acrobatic 


cavorts around the wheel of steel gave most rap and 
hip-hop artists some pretty stiff competition, and his 
gleeful destruction and disintegration of vinyl records 
pointed to a complex love-hate relationship with the 
slices of 'black stuff that clutter up our lives. 

The strategy of excess reached some kind of zenith with 
the incredible Ground-Zero band. This became a large 
enclave, boasting a roster of nearly a dozen players in its 
final incarnation, and sometimes seemed to be like a cult 
of devotees under the benign leadership of Otomo, 
highly-efficient crack troops whose mastery of their 
instruments meant they could turn on a dime without 
even pausing for breath. The Ground-Zero 
insect-monster grew...its many legs all marching 
relentlessly towards the same goal of producing 
mind-crushing, body-slamming, remorseless violence in 


63 






The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 



d op op p o p p O O OJO o o c 


music. They achieved a huge sound, ’ \ P 

freely melded ’out' jazz, pyschedelia, JSffBra ^ Jr ’ I 
rock and electronics and rolled it 
a a 

through a sort of media- saturation ^ 

colliding TV and movie clip samples. 

Such sampling play was already a 
cliche then, but Otomo did it with a iMHf 
rare imagination and power. As Clive ’ JMmI 
Bell has observed, at their peak y 

Ground-Zero emphasised that the taJSfqJ 
world we live in is crammed with far Hkj" 
too much information coming at us all 
the time, and we're in danger of 

sensory overload. The thing is, ‘i : 

Otomo predicted this before it even NLjB li WM" ' 

happened - now. with the Internet, Stiplf St * ■' 

TV coverage of everything, billboards m n — 

invading every possible empty space, 

700 Playstation games on the racks at BmQQ flpf 

every Virgin megastore, and pop ^ " Mfe 

music played in every public space - 

In spite of his remarkable '* ^ 

achievements, Otomo perhaps began 

to sense a certain personal dissatisfaction with the direction his work was taking. The 
Consume-Red project, for example, while resulting in some astonishing results, had a 
certain nihilism at its core. There were three releases in the trilogy, of which the 
third was a wilfully planned, highly competitive remix project involving international 
star noise-makers. The intention was to reduce the original recording to mincemeat, 
as if by making something already loud and chaotic even more loud and chaotic, 
Otomo could somehow efface the excesses of Ground-Zero's slash and burn 
missions. The same way that Vietnam soldiers tried to win an unwinnable battle by 
becoming even more violent. Otomo had started with AK rifles and hand grenades, 
but now he was moving onto the Napalm. But it was destructive - if the 
Ground-Zero monster had started life as a giant locust, eating entire fields of crops in 
an hour, now it consumed everything - and was starting to feed on itself. 

In a sense, Ground-Zero had become the nearest equivalent to a 'dinosaur group' for 
the 1990s - and that term was of course bandied around in the 1970s by UK music 
journalists to identify the sworn 'enemies' of Punk Rock. Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd 
were both prime examples of dinosaurs, but then were Led Zeppelin ever as loud 
and mighty as Ground-Zero? And Pink Floyd could only dream of the mastery of 
electronic equipment that Otomo's army displayed. With great deliberation, Otomo 
planned a series of farewell concerts for the group, and I saw one at the London 
Musicians' Collective festival in 1997 (see SP issue 3), for which we have Ed Baxter 
the organiser to thank. The explosive live version of Consume Red was 
overpowering enough, but the psychedelic Japanese tune they closed the show with 
was an absolute eulogy - a truly moving experience. The same emotion is evident on 
another 'farewell' performance, documented on the ReR double CD featuring 
Cassiber. And don't forget the Last Concert CD on Alcohol and Amoebic records, 
reviewed this issue. 

Quite a few tearful goodbye concerts there, don't you think? About as many farewell 
appearances as The Who...the repetition of this long goodbye suggested to me that 
there was a strong ceremonial aspect to Otomo's disbanding of the group. He 
wanted to draw a line - and do it emphatically. In classical Japanese culture, isn't there 
a ceremonial aspect to almost everything - from pouring and drinking tea, to 
committing ritual suicide? Ground-Zero went through all the steps of Hara-Kiri and 
did it in public, leaving us only the raw entrails to sift through. 

Then, worrying about the huge bills that this expensive band had run up, and beset by 
personal problems, Otomo retreated from this cruel world for a few months. He sat 
in his Tokyo apartment and rediscovered his beloved Manga - Japanese comics - 
collection, specifically the favourites from the days of his youth, and found comfort 
there, if not even a touch of inspiration. He then bounced back with a new band, a 
new sound and a new direction. Even the old name had to go - Ground-Zero was 
too powerful a name, too redolent of atomic warfare and creating too many 
expectations for the listener. I.S.O. was the new band - and it was stronger, leaner, 
fitter than Ground-Zero - and far quieter! It was also more egalitarian (the name of 
the band is taken from the initials of the players); Otomo was happy to relinquish the 
responsibility of being the leader, and let the trio share the exciting experiences of 
making new musical discoveries together. 


extremely quietly, inspired by new 
young musicians in Tokyo who were 
doing likewise. There was and is a 
small but growing backlash against 
wT the brutal guitar noise that has 

become associated with Tokyo, out 
■ V fr»y ‘l • °f which some people (Keiji Haino, 

B C High Rise, Musica Transonic) have 

L—jNNHHMPBI been doing quite nicely. Ichiraku 

Yoshimitsu - the 'funny guy’ drummer 
■MHMHNBki - completed the trio, perhaps not 
. ' quite sure how he could add value, 

■ an< ^ untl ' he found his voice he kept 

~ changing what he was doing on the 

international tour the band embarked 

upon. The difference between ISO 
and Ground-Zero was immediately 
beneficial to Otomo's mental health, however - it was 
cheaper, and far more portable - only a few light 
instruments and little amplification sufficed. It must have 
been like leaving Emerson Lake and Palmer to become a 
solo triangle player! He started to actually enjoy going 
on the road and playing live again. 

By the time they landed in London, ISO were already 
sufficiently together to record the impressive CD for 
Alcohol records, with the help of Xentos. This was 
released in 1999. Other records they have made include 
Gravity Clock on Amoebic Records in Japan, and a live 
CD on Zero Gravity records taken from radio and live 
concert performances in Japan and Marseilles. As 
Filament, Otomo and Matsubara have made one record 
for Extreme. 


A memorable weekend in October 1999 allowed a 
handful of fortunate Londoners a chance to see in 
succession a performance by AMM, followed by one by 
Otomo with Keith Rowe and the Japanese guitarist Taku 
Sugimoto. AMM (30 October 1 999, The Warehouse on 
Theed Street London SEI) rarely perform these days. 
These venerable Englishmen - Edwin Prevost, Keith 
Rowe and John Tilbury - remain without doubt the 
apogee of excellence in English improvisation. What 
struck me this time - as if I finally noticed it! - is how 
these guys are such minimalists. They hardly seem to 
make a move at all during playing. What little movement 
there is, is deliberate and carefully chosen. This is in 
contrast to the fact that the music has no end of things 
going on within it - it is incredibly deep, spacious, and 
surrounds everything like a thin grey fog. AMM appear, 
rather than creating music, simply to be revealing 
something that was there all along. The radio samples 
used by Keith Rowe are a clue - sound is all around us 
now all the time, but you don't hear it until you 'tune in' 
your body's personal radio set. AMM are exhorting us 
to tune in our own in-built sensory crystal to the right 
waveband, and the message is revealed. 

Group improvisation, through AMM, becomes less of an 
attempt for players to express themselves, solo or in 
harmony; and more of a collective attempt to lift the 
veil on the unknowable, through the world of sound. 


64 


The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


The audience too have a crucial part to play in the process. We're there to listen - I 
mean really LISTEN - and to give back emotion to the band. It's a two-way 
communication, a genuine process of sharing. We're not just having the music spread 
onto us, as passive receivers; but if we pay attention and move with the vibrations, 
we can actively feed in to the work. 

Otomo saw AMM perform some years ago in Japan. Although he's not keen to 
emulate classic 'call and response' improvisation of the Company school, which he 
finds too schematic and predictable, Otomo is certainly keen to emulate AMM's 
compassionate approach in his new quieter music. To play quiet music is to ask the 
audience a question. Ground-Zero in contrast tended to obliterate audience 
response - and if we weren't listening, all Otomo could do was make everything 
louder! The concert he played with Keith Rowe and Taku Sugimoto, a sublime 
Japanese guitarist, at The Spitz, London, on 31 October 1999 amply demonstrated 
that he is fully capable of involving us in a truly meditative and near-spiritual way - 
everyone in the audience went totally silent. 

I think they were playing together as a trio for the first time, after the initiative of 
Keith Rowe (he likes the challenge). Sugimoto was frankly excellent, playing his very 
quiet sustained harmonics and simple chords. Not in any hurry to 'get his balls on 
display' - as Derek Bailey observes is a problem with some gung-ho European 
improvisors. Once he found a perfect musical figure he was happy to repeat it for as 
long as necessary. All of this was intercut with some first-rate malarkey from Rowe - 
a really hot player on the hand-held fan blowing air over the strings - and Otomo's 
sublime feedback. Again, that minimal movement was observable - when the players 
reached that trance of stasis that is the Nirvana of improvising, their limbs, fingers 
and feet were barely moving at all, afraid to disturb the tranquillity. Long electronic 
notes were just hanging there, shimmering like the Northern Lights in the sky. 

Before he moved on to another concert in Russia, Otomo found time to record a 
session for the BBC Mixing It programme, and give this interview to The Sound 
Projector on I November 1999 in London. May I say in print what a charming 
gentleman this musician is? Warm and approachable, and very modest about his 
remarkable work. As a comics fan myself, I though I'd start off by showing him a few 
samples of weird Japanese underground Manga I've managed to accumulate in my 
hoard, just to see if Otomo could enlighten me. 


IQfQIQlQtQIOlQIQlQlQlQIOlQIQIOIOI 


OTOMO: i was grown up with Manga, before the music. When I was six or five 
years old, I started reading Manga. There's really a lot of variation! Some popular 
manga, underground, and for adults, for kids, for girls, for boys, for women, for 
men.. .porno manga, everything! There's no shame [about reading Manga in public], 
it's quite a special culture, in Japan everyone reads it. In the street, in the subway. 
(Looking at American compilation book) That's from a comic called Garo, it's one of 
the famous Underground comics. 1 970s...maybe end of 1960s. I like his stuff! 

EP: / really enjoyed the concert last night, at The Spitz. The three guitarists - Taku 
Sugimoto, Keith Rowe, yourself... very very good. Is that the first time you've played 
as a trio ! 


EP: / noticed last night, as you said, he was playing very 
quietly, and / think you were making some feedback, 
suddenly a big wave of feedback coming in and even 
though you were quite loud and quite intense you could 
still hear everything Taku was doing, the presence was 
there. Remarkable! Very powerful! 

OTOMO: I'm really not interested in just 
response-improvisation. I mean if someone play DAH! 
then I play KAAAAAA! KAAAA! [I'm] completely not 
interested in this kind of call and response. It's just like a 
kind of scheme. But Taku's style, it's really like a kind of 
deep collaboration together. And the last two or three 
years, some of [the] Japanese new musicians play also 
kind of his style. I mean, not similar, but some are 
play[ing] very quietly. For me, [the] feeling is very 
similar. Like Akiyam Tetsuji - [he's] really not famous, 
but he's kind of one of them. He's also a guitarist and he 
worked with Taku [for] maybe more than fifteen years. 
Also Toshimaru Nakamura. These two guys [were] 
making a concert at the Bar Aoyama. That [venue] is in 
Tokyo. Very small! Almost like the size of this kitchen. 
Always full of the people - but full means just twenty or 
something! But younger people come. And the story of 
the place, always one or two guests. Like sometimes I 
join, and also lot of young musicians like Sachiko M, she 
plays sampler. And Utah Kawasaki. She plays broken 
synthesiser! Really interesting. Half-broken. A kind of 
out-out-control synthesiser. She also [is] very very 
quiet. And Sachiko plays not loud but just makes one 
frequency, really sharp [and] focused. She also doesn't 
play too much...then after ten minutes another 
frequency.. .very very interesting. 

EP: Last night what / thought was that all of you hardly 
seemed to be moving at all. Very very slight movements. 
The same with AMM on Saturday, and yet the music is 
so powerful and deep and there 's so much going on. 
And yet it's so.. .not just minimal, it's... like they don't set 
out to make a tremendous effort. It's very simple. 

OTOMO: There are a lot of elements, yeh. I have really 
found, for me, the last maybe two years, [I] get a lot of 
influence from Taku. Yes, Sachiko also - I live with her, 
so that's maybe too much influence from her! After [I] 
finished the Ground-Zero, I'm a little bit lost. Maybe 
few months, yeh. 

EP: Was it something of a crisis period ? 



OTOMO: Yeh, first time. First time I've played with Keith Rowe. I don't know who 
made the idea [to play together]. It's not dear...l asked him to play together, and also 
someone organised the concert with Taku and Keith in France, and that was I think 
the beginning. Then I asked him to come to Austria to play together, that will be next 
week. So then Keith Rowe - maybe Keith Rowe [or] Ed Baxter [had the idea], I'm not 
sure. They decided to set something up. I've played with Taku before, in Japan. 

EP: Can you tell me more about Taku ! His playing was just wonderful - wonderful 
music. Never heard of him before, and... 


OTOMO: I'm not sure about his history. I don't know his background, but I first met 
him maybe two or three years ago. I bought his CD in Japan. He does very different 
style to typical Japanese underground music. Because before that, always Japanese 
underground music is just really 
LOUD! Of course, I love that...l'm 
one of them! But Taku's style is 
very different - but still very good 
tension, very quiet, but very good 
tension. Nothing similar to 
anyone. Very special. Then I went 
to his concert. Someone 
introduced me - finally I met him 
to make some concerts together 
and it was amazing, because he 
keep play[ing] very softly. 

Sometimes I play very loud but still 
I could hear his sound. I play loud, 
then stop, then he sounded 
like...very difficult to say, it's like a 
very interesting landscape - a very 
interesting map. I've never had this 
kind of experience before him. 


OTOMO: Yes, and not only musical. Personal, 
relationships, also financial. Lot of stories! Because it 
was [a] quite big band, Ground-Zero. I mean - the last 
one [had] eleven members! I'm not good for the 
business side. Chaos! Yeh, [I was] a little bit lost. Not 
seriously, but two months I just stayed in my apartment, 
with Manga! And in this two months I read lot of Manga. 
Not new ones. From 1960s. That's when I was kid. 
There's a lot of reissues now. So [I read] just that kind 
of older stuff. Just for...relax. Then I re-started. And 
after few months I really felt refreshed...and now, just 
really found the feeling [from] when I started music, and 
it was just for fun. 


the trio 


65 


The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


The answers went only in this 
direction...." 


EP: So you rediscovered why you wanted to do it in the first place. 

OTOMO: Yeh, yeh. I think so, I think so. My first place was a kind of improvised 
music. Or maybe free jazz. 

EP: So you put together I S. O. As I've said already I'm very impressed - all I've heard 
is the one CD that you recorded in London, Ed Baxter put it out, Xentos produced 
it.. .but it seemed to me that there was a very deliberate decision to try something 
quite different. And you 've explained you felt a bit overwhelmed by what happened 
with Ground-Zero. 

OTOMO: Yeh, that was just after the three months Manga-time! The Ground-Zero 
was like my only band [as a leader]. But I.S.O. is different. Three members, and equal 
- and I'm not leader. So I'm just one of the players. Total improvisation. Just at the 
beginning of I.S.O. it was quite different - some composition stuff, but now it's totally 
improvised. Around that time, I think it was last year, last springtime, we did a two 
month tour in Europe, and maybe we did more than 30 or 40 concerts. Usually this 
kind of tour just makes [me] tired, but it was very fun for us because every night we 
find new things. And after finishing the concert we always talked about music idea. 
That was really ...lovely, for me! Really really fun! Then finally we recorded in London. 

EP: By that time, the percussionist had stopped playing percussion ? 

OTOMO: Yeh, yeh. Strange guy! Always changing! Last time, he play just drum 
without electric, but maybe next time he just play maybe guitar or I don't know! He 
always changing! 

Funny guy! I don't 
know why [my music] 
changed, but maybe I 
just come back from 
my beginning. But of 
course now it's 
almost end of the 
century. It's a different I 
order from the 1 970s. [ 

My feelings [went] 
back to the beginning 
but still we are in end 
of the century. [So we | 
can't ignore] digital 
and modern 
technology in I.S.O. 

EP: It's very important\ 

/ think, not to lose 
sight of what got you 
interested in the first 
place. / respect the 
fact that you wanted 
to stop Ground-Zero. | 

/ think there was 
almost a ceremony to | 
the way that you 
dismantled it and 
dissolved the group. Is | 
that true ! 

OTOMO: Sorry, 
could you give it to 
me more easily! A 
ritual! Ah-ah-ah! Yes, I 
really needed it. Yeh, 
maybe it's like a 
ceremony, that's true, j 
I have to say to the 
people: 'I stop the 
Ground-Zero!' I 
needed that. 

Otherwise... I really 

wanted to change, around that time. But if I use a [similar] name like Ground-Zero, 
it's quite difficult. The name was wrong...because Ground-Zero has a strong image 
for the sound. That was the idea. But from the beginning of Ground-Zero, that was 
my reality. I'm not against my past, but I want to change. Yes, that's true, maybe it 
was a kind of ceremony. 

EP: With Keiji Haino, I've only seen him perform a couple of times, but every 
performance appears to have a kind of ceremony about it. The lights have to be 
turned out nobody must make a noise, and if you do make a noise he won 't play, and 
/ respect that.. .it's very important to have a sense of purpose. .and occasion. And 
especially if you don't stop a group, you'll end up like The Rolling Stones! You'll just 
play until you're seventy years old! 

OTOMO: (laughter) Ah-ah-ah-ah! 


EP: You've said somewhere else in an interview [with 
Clive Bell] that the world caught up with Ground-Zero. 
Ground-Zero had a vision of how the world would be, 
which was 'too much information' - and now suddenly 
there IS too much information. So it's like you were a 
prophet. You predicted the way the world was gonna 
g° 

OTOMO: Yes, the interviewer asked me about that 
then. Maybe I just say by stranded my work...but my 
idea is not like a [query], just a kind of...just music idea 
is going to like that. Afterwards, now I know I just 
change from too-much-information..but the beginning is 
not from this word, just I like to do that! You 
understand! My music ideas are always not from 
language, not from the [written] word, just something I 
like. It's a feeling. Afterwards, someone asks me 'Is that 
right!' then [I might reply] 'Maybe, yes!' Maybe it's true 
about the information overload, because in the middle 
of the 1 990s I really needed a lot of information [to do 
music]. Like if I play sampler, I need a really big 
[computer] memory, but now I really don't need a big 

memory, just a few 
memory is enough.... 

EP. because now 
you're not using so 
many sampler 
presets, just playing 
sinewaves... 




OTOMO: Even 
physically I think—just 
to play [any] musical 
instrument is just a 
kind of memory. If 
someone plays [the] 
chord B-flat minor, 
that's a memory, 
physically. Of course. 
I'm not against the 
memory. But I think 
to create physical 
music also, behind it, 
is a lot of memory. I 
think the sampling 
memory is a kind of 
the same thing. Last 
night, when I played 
guitar, of course I 
play - but I don't play 
like jazz guitar. I'm 
interested in just one 
guitar note. One 
feedback. That's the 
kind of same idea as 
when I play without 
[computer] memory. 
Last night also I play 
guitar without the 
physical memory. I 
have memory, of 
course, but I don't 
need it too much! 
One good point is I 
really don't have a 
good memory, so... I don't need [to] try, I just always 
forget everything [anyway], so...no problem! 

EP: / think with what you're doing now, you give more 
time, and space, and freedom to the listener. The 
audience - it's not like a race any more, there 's enough 
time for the listener to digest and absorb the music. / 
certainly feel that nowadays, we're not given any time at 
all - we 're expected to have an opinion on something 
immediately. I'm a very slow person / think / need a lot 
of time to absorb something. 

OTOMO: Maybe my answer is different from your 
question, but about Ground-Zero time...maybe the 
music of Ground-Zero had a lot of questions for the 
audience, but [the] answers [went] maybe only in this 


© 


o 


66 




The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


direction. [See diagram] But now my music - like I.S.O., or yesterday, is a question. 
Of course the audience decide [if] this music is a question, but I don't make answers. 

I mean the audience can decide anything from this music. Because Ground-Zero have 
a kind of focusing. Of course, the beginning of the Ground-Zero time, maybe I want 
to say something to the audience, but now - it's quite different. Maybe I'm also one of 
the audience on the stage...maybe! I've really enjoyed hearing Keith's sounds, Taku's 
sounds, my sounds. 

EP: I'm sure that goes along with what AMM believe as well. It's kind of utopian, their 
goal, their dream, their mission - that the audience must be included in every 
improvisation. 

OTOMO: Yes, I think yesterday's concert also - the audience was very important for 
us. If the audience didn't listen together, I'm sure our music [would be] quite 
different. 


EP: So what you're saying is there's now more response, give and take. .with 
Ground-Zero it was all just one way, everything coming from the band. 

OTOMO: With Ground-Zero, even if the audience didn't like it, I can just insist [and 
make it louder], saying 'LISTEN! LISTEN!' Yesterday - totally different. Now I like my 
idea. Now I like myself. Maybe it's Manga comics helped me with this kind of idea, I 
don't know! 


EP: Your first instrument - would it have been a tape recorder, or a guitar ? 

OTOMO: Yeh, yeh. Tape recorder. Also - it's not an instrument, but I could make a 
radio with tube when I was a teenager, with a cheap transistor. Also I made a very 
unusual, very primitive synthesiser, or very primitive organ, just to make like a 
[peeeee-oooooo-peeeeee] ... 

EP: An oscillator ? 


was just one of his fans, but of course it's really helpful 
for me [to meet him]. It was a very interesting scene in 
Tokyo, just before the 1990s. Lot of things happened, 
but no-one knows what. Just something! Before John 
Zorn, just noisy musicians play just noisy style; free jazz 
musicians play just free jazz style; contemporary 
musicians play just contemporary style...they're not 
against each other, only different. But John Zorn did a 
funny thing - he bring them from the different 
backgrounds [together], which never happened before 
John Zorn. That was very interesting. Sometimes [the 
results] completely didn't work! But I love this kind of 
adventure, this kind of experiment. Very challenging! 


EP: is is not so exciting now, in Japan, or is it just 
different ? 


OTOMO: Mmmm - just for me, just for my opinion, the 
end of the 1 980s was just chaos, just before something 
happened, a lot of interesting things. Then 1990s - a lot 
of things start in Tokyo, and then came a lot of CDs. 
And that was OK. But after middle of 1990s, for me - 
everyone [was] just doing the same things. Of course, 
[there were] still great things. The quality was very 
good, but.. .always same persons like me, like The Ruins, 
like Keiji Haino. Of course, everyone did it great. 
Afterwards, Taku, or Sachiko, more younger musicians 
from the different rock - that [was] more exciting for 
me with quiet sounds! Some of them are completely 
against me, even! But I love them! Because I know the 
reason. I also sometimes am against my past! I love that! 

EP: You mean musicians are going out of their way to 
deny Ground-Zero or noise music? 

OTOMO: The Japanese do it with more kindness, not 
like strongly against. 


EP: You seem to have been very hard-working on the 
international scene. A lot of appearances. How do you 
feei about the state of new music today ? Does it look 
healthy to you? Has everything been done? Has 
experimental music got to the point where it can only 
appeal to the same people, it's not branching out to get 
a new audience? 


OTOMO: It’s quite difficult to 
judge for everything. Some of it 
is nice, some of it is not great. 
So it's difficult to say [if] this 
music scene is good or bad. For 
me, always something 
interesting seems to happen 
everywhere. Sometimes 
someone says new music has 
died or punk rock is died. 
Always someone says that rock 
is finished. Or jazz is finished. 
Always happening. But for me 
always something interesting 
happen everywhere. Just me 
personally. I'm always 
positive-thinking. I like - it's not 
new, but I like [the] idea of the 
Mego people. Very much! Also 
some Chicago young musicians. 
Jim O'Rourke of course already 
everyone knows, but not only 
Jim 0'Rourke...but more 
younger musicians like T V 
Powell. Not famous. They also 
play electronics. Jim Baker - 
he's a quite older musician, he's 
a very nice piano player, also 
he play harps and things like 
that. It's great, really great. I 
think not famous, but just last 
year I went to Chicago and play 
with a lot of new musicians. 

And everyone has a very nice 
feeling. Like at yesterday's 
concert! 


OTOMO: Yeh, yeh, an oscillator. I made it because I just listened to synthesiser stuff 
in the early 70s from pop stuff, rock stuff, and the sound for me - it was so strange! 
What's that instrument?! Then I tried to find what kind of instrument it was, and 
someone said it's a mini-moog. I called the instrument shop. But - unbelievably 
expensive! It's not possible to buy, [for] a junior high school student! So I said, OK, 
maybe the oscillator. So I make a very simple oscillator, [makes 
ooo-wooo-ooo-wooo sounds] I thought that was a synthesiser! A [real] synthesiser 
had a more complicated...but I just did it. Just for fun, to make something. I don't play 
with the sound, just make it. Also tape recorder, just make tape music, just for fun. I 
don't play for the stage. That was my first experience of the music. Then when I was 
high school student, I just start with school band - play rock and roll or blues or jazz 
- just for getting a girlfriend! 

EP: i get the impression that there's a lot more music available in Japan than there is 
here. Or anywhere else in the Western world for that matter, is that true? 

OTOMO: Many, many CDs. 

It's almost impossible to hear 
everything. Especially a lot of 
reissued stuff from the 60s, 
not only avant-garde music - a 
lot of pop stuff, progressive 
rock... if you want to buy a 
CD, you can get ANYTHING. 

Anything at all. 

EP: Did you see Derek Bailey 
when he came to Japan? 

OTOMO: Yeh, I saw him in 
1980 - with Milford Graves. It 
was fantastic - just fantastic 
concert. Milford Graves, and a 
Japanese dancer - Min Tanaka. 

Three days concert in Tokyo. 

And I went to it every day. 

Because I got free tickets! 

From kind of Japanese Time 
Out magazine. They said we 
give you five free tickets for 
the listener, so...it was really 
interesting for me. Very great 
concert. I'm just wondering if 
someone recorded this 
concert? Derek just played 
like- Derek Bailey! Milford just 
played like Milford! 

EP: Have you met John Zorn? 

OTOMO: John Zorn lives in 
Tokyo. I don't remember 
exactly, but from start of 
middle 80s. He lived in Tokyo. SACHIKO MATSUBARA 

He have apartment in Tokyo. I 


67 






The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


Looking more like a warehouse than a pub the Reece & Rrkin is a dark and 
dingy sweatpit serving up pints of bilgewater in plastic pots. Inside was a 
mixed audience featuring hardly any of the usual specimens that haunt these 
events - the grey men in their late 20s with shoulder bags, Clark Kent glasses, 
shaved heads and a face loaded with chinless misery intended as a mask of 
artful, detached coolness. Impossible to be cool in here 'cos if the heat don't 
get ya then the sight of all these healthy young females, rigged out in 
regulation Gap Gestapo uniforms, surely will. But there's always one: the 
Fashion Victim, here because he'd read they were 'cool', the latest thing to be 
into for as long as the music press arbiters of taste deem it to be so. Was he 
hard to spot? No, because in a pub packed 
to the gusset with sweaty bodies there he 
was wearing an olive green snorkel parka 
zipped all the way up to the top with a 
1 977 footballer's perm looking like the 
latest post- Trainspoccingincarndition of 
Doctor Who. 

I'm sure he was confused how to feel 
about support band Fridge of whom not 
enough has been written in the press for a 
clear stance to be taken. Is it art or is it 
arse? Well, if three sullen looking 20 
year-olds swapping instruments and 
slapping out car advert background music 
is 'art' then go right ahead but I know 
what I saw. Only on the final track did 
they show any signs of life when they 
decided Tonight Matthew, We're Going 
To Be Mogwai' and promptly built a 
sizeable wall of noise with bottom-string 
bass breezeblocks and the kind of simplistic repeated chord progression that 
you could communicate to friendly aliens with. All very typical late 90s They 
Were Quite Good, Weren't They?' which, for me at least, is not enough. And 
just what sort of a band name is 'Fridge' anyway? Is it meant as some kind of 
distanced, nonchalant stance on band names altogether? Certainly the music 
they play wouldn't suit a moniker like 'Cannibal Babysitter' or 'Foetus Kebab' 
but where, where, fucking WHERE is any sign of commitment to their music? 
All that scowling behind your limited release EPs and blurred photos of 
fuck-all album covers says.. .NOTHING. 

And on Planet Earth 1999 saying nothing just won't do - there's too many 
signals coming in, too much information, too much calling for our attention - 
shit, just too much of too much to try and hide in your minimalist decorated 
caves, fanning yourselves with empty CD cases while the insistent burn of 
modern culture scorches the cities dry, leaving the streets full of corpses 
blind with nostalgia for a time and place that never existed. 

Someone has to be bold, to take the chance and step out of this ruined arena 
of wasted potential and decaying spirit and sweep up the ashes before lighting 
the way ahead. With every other artform reduced to bad parodies of former 
myths of imagined glories only music seems capable of stepping over the 
millennial chasm and embracing the chaos that is surely waiting for us on the 
other side. The situation takes on an almost Biblical imperative because we 
really DO need something to wash all this crap away - one giant cleansing 
wave that consumes everything we hate, everything we don't fucking need - 
mobile phones, billboards, water features, 'lifestyle' magazines, platform 
trainers, hanging baskets, lava lamps. Sunny Delight, discos - all flushed out of 
our lives and dumped on the ocean floor like the SHIT it is. But where will 
this trigger for the cataclysm come from? No good waiting for Yahweh, 
Buddha, Poseidon or Krishna or any of that crowd because they're all dead 
and gone. So it has to come from us. 'Way down Inside', one huge psychic 
lurch towards the shore we've all been trying to reach for.. .THOUSANDS of 
years now. And, as far as I'm concerned, leading the vanguard in this Reverso 
Canute Mission is Godspeed You Black Emperor! 

Take note 'Fridge' and all you other wide-eyed hopefuls out there - if you 
want to catch the attention of the jaded masses then get yourselves a bloody 
good band name. The English language has almost run out of single words 
that will serve the purpose (though I still cling, with fading hope, to the 
prospect of 'Chafe' or 'Orifice' cropping up in the NME one week) so try 
using some fucking imagination. Reach for the bookshelf, steal a song title, 
consult a Ouija board or shake up some Scrabble letters in a bag and just see 
what happens! GYBE! showed MILES of style by taking their name from a 
Japanese biker gang and making it very much their own; without injecting it 
with any specific meaning, without ruining its load of very dark mystery that is 
so vital to their sound. 

So, in the rising heat nine people fumbled about on the tiny stage, placing 
chairs, setting up drumkits and smoking. They looked like a random collection 
of street freaks - everything from the wild-eyes Catweazle of a drummer to 
the Cuban Revolutionary and the knot-topped Big Issue salesman - the kind 
of grizzled phantoms that lurk on every back street in every city in the world. 
The two girls who make up the string section are very much the flowers 
amongst the weeds, sporting flimsy white tops and smoking enough to create 
a dry ice cloud that Metallica would've been proud of. With their records 
they've always kept themselves at an enigmatic distance from the audience, 
upholding the fantasy that this music came from somewhere else, from the 
spaces in between. But now, here they are, in the flesh, real specimens and, 
guess what, they look just like you and me. They aren't 'stars', they aren't all 
dressed in black and putting on some tired poses because this is all about the 
music. Really, finally, once and for all, it's about the music. 



It starts simply enough - the strings play The Dead Flag Blues' refreshingly loud 
enough to drown out the twats who like to ruin gigs by talking. They're soon 
joined by the three guitarists all working on the same chords, lifting the sound 
higher. A projector flickers into life and the word 'Hope' scratched out of a black 
background shudders against the back wall. It's almost note for note perfect with 
the record and the last predictable thing they do all night. The track is cut short 
when something on stage explodes, derailing the sonic train for five minutes or so. 
They restart with a new track that seems inspired by the wailing voice from the 
original Star Trek theme - but this isn't lazy referencing of popular culture, this is 
totally transcendental, rendering the crowd transfixed like hillbillies watching 

UFOs as they ascend into the 
stratosphere. And that's pretty much 
where they stayed all night. 

It's difficult to talk about their music 
without resorting to hyperbole and poetic 
indulgences so I'll try to be succinct: nine 
people, two of 'em drummers, really loud. 
An often painful wall of noise that 
loosened my vertebrae and pummelled my 
innards like a heavyweight champion. 
Rickering images of clown faces, ruined 
cityscapes and dogs rolling in the grass 
skimmed across the back wall. About 80% 
was new material with some surprising 
twists on the 'established' (in some minds) 
GYBE! 'formula'. Everything from sudden 
drop-ins (as opposed to achingly slow 
builds to crescendo) to almost Dub 
basslines to sustained salvos of dual 
drumming that could level a small Balkan 
state. REALLY fucking loud. Tunes' (probably too simplistic a term for them but 
there honestly aren't the words) almost familiar and yet, somehow, never heard 
before. Without any lyrics to get in the way the transmission comes through clear 
and unadulterated but, like I said, no amount of verbs or nouns are going to be 
enough to convey the effect of this music. In the end it comes down to visual 
impressions, brainscreen flashes: Motorways at night / A tree on a hillside, bent by 
the wind / litter in the streets / Clint Eastwood riding into town in A Few Dollars 
More I American cars / Darth Vader / a sandstorm in the Gobi desert / a fire in a 
nightclub / the Hulk Vs the Thing / surf at midnight / dinosaur bones / an 
abandoned factory yard choked with weeds / Catherine Zeta Jones in a black 
thong, down on all fours, dripping with sweat / a Rothko painting / an iceberg / a 
tree struck by lightning / a black Ford Cortina Mk IV on fire / a giant skeleton in 
the sky made from clouds / the photos of the Black Dahlia's body / a beach 
covered with snow / a gutter flooded with rain / Auschwitz / Las Vegas / Taxi 
Driver I Diana's Funeral / The Death of Gwen Stacy / the view from the top of 
Grouse Mountain, Vancouver BC / Durer’s Rhinoceros / oil in a puddle / HP 
Lovecraft / HR Giger / Apocalypse Now... 

At the end of it all, when they finally shamble off stage, I'm left exhausted and 
exhilarated. More testing than any moshpit this felt like an endurance test and a 
glimpse behind the veil of consensus reality, beyond the numbing spectacle of daily 
life, into an untarnished landscape where only the strong survive and Hope is just 
another name for home. Where the bone of an idea like a 'Rock Band' has been 
stripped of its meat and drained of its marrow and all we have left is faith that 
something beyond fashion and comfort blanket nostalgia could be a totem for us 
to cling to. That a simple union of string symphonies and guitar thunder could be 
enough to sum up thousands of years of human evolution. On the cusp of a 
Millennium's end that could mean everything or absolutely fuck-all we need GYBE! 
like we need oxygen and hamburgers. By taking their stadium wide sound and 
compressing it into a cramped pub they make it abundantly clear that nothing will 
change if we just stand together and march like automatons; the revolution is 
private or not at all. History repeats itself from Belfast to Beijing and like a wiser 
man then me once said: Those Who Do Not Remember The Past Are 
Condemned To Repeat It 

GYBE! have bust the clock and burnt the calendar. It's TIME to face the future 
with no limitations and no chicane. 

RIK RAWLING 20 July 1999 



YOU BUCK 



14 July 1999 at 
the Fleece & Firkin, Bristol 


69 


The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 



The Science 
Group 

A Mere Coincidence 

RER MEGACORP SCIENCE 
1 CD (1999) 

The continuing presence of Chris 
Cutler in so many areas of musical 
activity is something to be welcomed 
and treasured. As well as releasing 
his own music, and that of his 
extensive network of collaborators 
and associates, through his ReR label, 
he has remained a committed live and 
studio performer. Live, his drumming 
is a wonder to behold. No other 
performer plays the drumkit as he 
does, his arms weaving dynamically 
about his equipment in a virtuoso 
display of controlled aggression. Yet 
Cutler's primary impulse is towards 
self-effacement and collaboration, as 
is evidenced by countless group 
concerts and recordings. A Mere 
Coincidence is the most recent of 
these, and a particularly fine example. 
Cutler's aphoristic lyrics on aspects of 
scientific theory are given berserk 
settings by composer Stevan 
Tickmayer. The album is a succession 
of short, frenzied ly inventive musical 
spasms, presided over by fierce 
guiding intelligence. Cutler's old 
mucker Fred Frith contributes wild 
guitar riffs, while Tickmayer weighs in 
with demented keyboard pounding. 
Cutler himself agitates powerfully on 
drums and electronics. Cutler's texts 
are sung by Amy Denio, whose 
ethereal voice swoops and glides 
around the group's formidably 
intense playing. Lurching shifts of 
sound and tempo create a 
confrontational, yet engrossing 
listening experience. 

RICHARD REES JONES 

Bob Drake 

Medallion Animal 
Carpet 

RER MEGACORP CTA 7 CD 
(1999) 

Another oddball recording from the 
estimable guitarist and producer Bob 
Drake. Mostly this release is 
dominated by storming, powerhouse 
tracks displaying Drake's twisted take 
on the history of rock guitar, his solo 
tour de force encompassing 
everything that's ever been played on 
that six-stringed beastie - from 
dysfunctional rockabilly to cornholing 
Country and Western riffs, via truly 
psychedelic mayhem of all stripes. In 
this he's proving more than a match 
for the great Eugene Chad bourne, 
assuming the role (like Mycroft to 
Sherlock Holmes) of his smarter 


brother. In his music-assassination 
conspiracy he's joined by main ReR 
man Chris Cutler effortlessly 
contributing an excellent round of 
super-fast drumming, and occasional 
deputy sidemen Tim Gadd, Jason 
Dumars, Mark Fuller and Mark 
McCoin who all stand to their guns. 
Drake's energised, breakneck pace on 
fretboard-stripping -which Cutler 
matches admirably - is matched only 
by his furious editing technique when 
he switches to producer-mode, and 
he delivers rush after rush of 
adrenalin-shock as the mismatched 
performances collide excitingly in real 
time. Dull linearity is sacrificed on the 
altar of exciting unknown chaos - 
virtually anything could happen. No 
wonder he's in demand as a producer 
in the States... 

Further chaos results from the 
ingenious ploy of scrambling his own 
lyrics. To help him with this, Drake 
used a software programme called 
'Spaghetti', a random sentence 
generator which can play around with 
your vocabulary. Its use might 
account for such pure Dada snippets 
as 'Deformed sewage squashed this 
insect / his kind toupee donated 
some worm / his snake accidentally 
rebuilt the / scary detrimental robot. ' 
I know how frustrated an artist can 
become at the limits of common 
sense - or at the limits of one's own 
abilities, or lack of them (it happens 
to me all the time, when drawing - 
often I can devise quite bizarre 
methods in an attempt to fool myself 
into achieving better work). Brian 
Eno's use of his Oblique Strategy 
cards probably works really well, if 
you obey the instructions 
imaginatively enough. And Robert 
Rauschenberg, still belting out 
amazing paintings in his latter years, 
continues to amaze himself. 'I tend to 


be mistrustful of ideas,' is his counsel. 
'Ideas are based on what you already 
know.' 

With his unassailable guitar skills 
matched with his intense editing style, 
Drake has come close to equalling 
the power of the early Mothers of 
Invention records. However, Frank 
Zappa's aim (in the 1 960s at any rate) 
in editing was to jolt listeners out of 
their security, and to juxtapose found 
recordings for maximum satirical 
effect - his method was a gun turned 
against the world. Drake, by contrast 
succeeds mainly in revealing the 
weird shapes inside his mental 
landscape. 

ED PINSENT 

Peter Cusack 

Where is the Green 
Parrot? 

RER MEGACORP PCI CD 
(1999) 

Peter Cusack is a well-known and 
well-established name in the London 
experimental music scene, not only 
for his recorded and performing 
achievements but also for the 
occasional evenings of electronic and 
electro-acoustic music he organises at 
The Spitz venue near Liverpool 
Street. Those who attend these 
events may even be lucky winners of 
a free CD in the raffles that he 
spontaneously organises, and he may 
even pour you a glass of Lucozade as 
he smiles at you from under his paper 
hat - all adding to the friendly, party 
atmosphere at these soirees. 

The same atmosphere of cheerful 
informality transfers to portions of 
this CD. It chirps out a mixture of 
unrehearsed guitar playing segments, 
mixed with environmental recordings 
- so the guitar vies with ambient 
sounds recorded at night, a barking 
dog, and many bird calls, including 
seagulls and - inevitably - a green 
parrot. The guitar at one stage 
becomes a Camberwick Green- styled 
melody of stupefying banality, to be 
followed by the sound of a jet plane 
landing. For some reason this 
reminded me very much of Young 
Marble Giants and their 1 98 1 tribute 
to Testcard music - and Cusack's CD 
starts to turn into a 1 960s BBC 
travelogue from here on. We segue 


into further untreated recordings, 
featuring Mr Cusack and his family 
during their holidays, or during a 
shopping trip. They make it abroad 
and we hear an ethnic stringed 
instrument plucking away, answering 
the earlier guitars. We also hear the 
unintentionally amusing remarks of 
this very middle class family and their 
smug observations about life - one of 
them is so PC he doesn't like the idea 
of 'caged animals'. Recalling the far 
better 'Belgium Barrage' by Adam 
Bohman, Cusack offers up a 
siren-blaring episode and also 
captures his stuffy remarks about 
'how the grownups are dealing with 
everything' to his offspring. This 
record has a few scant moments of 
atmosphere, but it's no Presque Rien 
- in fact Cusack's ambitions soon start 
to look a bit stunted. As for the 
Parrot episode itself, where Cusack 
loops bird noises with his own voice 
trying to get the bird to speak, it's 
simply infuriating. Animals, children, 
foreign holidays and patronising 
remarks - you know, Cusack missed 
his calling, He should have been a 
Blue Peter presenter! 

ED PINSENT 

Chris Cutler and 
Thomas Dimuzio 

Quake 

RER MEGACORP CCTD1 CD 
(1999) 

Ah, now this is bloody excellent. One 
of the most robust and full-blooded 
noise projects that Cutler has been 
associated with in recent years, and 
it's an intoxicating, glorious 
onslaught.. .of cascading whirlpools in 
the night sky, no less. Two live 
recordings, from Maine and 
Massachusetts. Dimuzio immediately 
earned a place in my heart with his 
1 998 release Headlock ; a solo turn 
on which he played no end of 
innumerable and unlikely-sounding 
pieces of junk ever admitted in the 
name of music-making. Here it seems 
he's letting Cutler handle most of the 
instrument hardware, although the 
drum kit and associated junk 
fragments are all electronically 
connected, and Dimuzio is constantly 
reprocessing everything - 
simultaneously wreaking his own 
cheerful mayhem with radios, CD 
players and samplers. It's like 
experiencing the full power of an 
electric storm, but not simply hearing 
it happen outside your window - 
you're right in the heart of this huge 
black raincloud, watching the 
elemental forces gather and blast out 
thunderbolts causing major havoc 
below. This is the kind of dark wine 
that'll really get your juices flowing, 
believe me. Cutler used to manage 
this kind of emancipated thundering 
on occasion when he really got down 
and dirty with Fred Frith in The Art 
Bears or Henry Cow - and they 
forgot all that cissy Art-Rock piffle. 
Since he clearly has the enviable 
facility to bash out musical noise of 
this quality in nothing flat why the 
hell isn't there more of it in the 
world? 

ED PINSENT 

Rer Megacorp, 79 Beulah Road, 
Thornton Heath, Surrey CR7 8JG 




The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2 



Erik M 

Frame 

FRANCE, METAMKINE MKCD026 3" CD 
(1999) 

This is a recent addition to the large collection 
of Cinema pour L'Oreille mini-discs issued by 
Jerome Noetinger's label out of France - none 
of which I actually own, but when you look at 
the impressive roster of names of the 
contributors to this unique series (Ferrari, 
Wehowsky, Marchetti, Gunter, Chion, 
O'Rourke, Ruttmann and many others) you 
have the feeling they have to be pretty intensely 
serious works. Jerome Noetinger's personal 
mission is, I can claim (without hearing these 
records) to assemble together all modern 
artists who build and expand on the 'classic' 
musique concrete framework. 

Erik M's contribution to the total effort is a 
very good one, and he actually built Frames up 
out of samples sourced from other CDs in the 
series. It's a brief but expertly managed suite. 
There is already so much music in the world it's 
nice to know there are people who are capable 
of recycling it effectively. The traces of _ 
sound remain as 'footprints', it says here. 


The Loop Orchestra 

The Analogue Years 


AUSTRALIA, ENDLESS RECORDINGS ER03 CD (1999) 


Quite superb. Just because you or I have never heard of these obscure Australians in no way 
diminishes the importance or power of their work. Achieved with tremendous economy - 
just tape loops and reel to reel tape recorders - and a great deal of patience. A more refined 
listener may be put off by the apparent crudeness of the sound and technique, but actually 
this brutalist quality only enhances the listening experience - why, these people may have 
been the first punk-concretists! The lessons of Steve Reich and Nurse With Wound are 
combined in one place, and The Loop Orchestra deliver more than their share of weirdness. 
Going one better than formal, established electro-acoustic music, these players are not afraid 
of using rhythm and melody (the latter in very small doses however), and they give time to 
allow the loops to speak. Over time, these pieces expand into amazing dimensions as they 
slowly unspool, most noticeably on the two very effective pieces 'Outsiders and Outcasts' 
and 'Hypnotique'. The former makes a haunting use of chanting voices, a heavy bass drum, 
and church bells to end the suite. The latter is more chaotic, letting its demented cartoon 
voices sputter gibberish over mechanical wheezes, hisses and grunts, while increasingly wild 
and adventurous foreign sounds leap into the fray. The final track, 'Woolloomooloop' is a 24 
minute epic (performed live, remarkably - as are all but two of the pieces here), making great 
use of street noise, traffic sounds, children screaming and distorted urban ambience to create 
a depressing townscape vision. OK, arguably some of this may appear like Industrial Music 
arriving some 20 years after it happened in the UK, but this particular vision is far less specific 
and directed than, say, the work of This Heat or Throbbing Gristle. For which 
open-endedness we must thank the seven members of The Loop Orchestra. 


One of the 'main men' in 


The Loop Orchestra 


the Orchestra, Peter 



And there's a fragment of delicious birdsong on 
the fourth sector, so how can you lose? Peter 
Cusack could learn something from this one! 

ED PINSENT 


Metamkine, SO Passage des Ateliers, 38140 
Rives, France 


Doyle, reports that the 
combo was formed in 
1 982 out of activities 
taking place on 2MBS-FM, 
an experimental FM radio 
station in Sydney, 
Australia. Some of the 
participants were 'using 
the radio studio as an 
instrument, 

experimenting with tape 
recorders and tape loops 
- cutting up, dissecting 
and repeating sounds.' 
From this, a decision was 
made to focus the 
activity - and put 
together 'something like 
an orchestra of machines. 
In this case it was 
reel-to-reel tape 
machines'. It was an 
exciting idea. Imagine an 
entire concert hall of up 
to forty players, equipped 
with old fashioned tape 

recorders. Each would be using tape loops to take the place of a conventional orchestral part 
- one loop for percussion, one for strings, one for brass. John Cage would have surely 
approved - if he hadn't been so anti-orchestras! Unfortunately, this grandiose idea has not yet 
been realised - and more's the pity. Instead, the five core members of The Loop Orchestra 
found themselves rehearsing a 'smaller scale study of pure sound'. Besides this CD, they made 
a vinyl record Suspense in limited quantities in 1991, and have performed at art galleries and 
concerts. A future planned release called Demise will be built around the readings of Anthony 
Mannix, an Art Brut painter whose work has appeared in Raw Vision magazine. 

ED PINSENT 

Endless Recordings, PO Box 693, Newtown, NSW 2042, Australia 


which is a nice idea...trace elements in the 
atmosphere, tiny shards of metal on the 
shelf working their way under your skin. 

Erik M offers 4 short tracks over 1 8 
minutes, intended to be put on shuffle-play 
in your CD device. It's very fragmented at 
first, with a randomised barrage of clicks and 
speedy noise whizzes, gurgles and electric 
clonks. Occasionally the collage might 
resolve itself into a semi-musical construct, 
deeply resonating tones along with guitar 
notes, heavily treated voices and a very deep 
sound - only to have this apparent solidity 
swept away, like an illusion in the wind. 

Distortion, speed, intense dynamics and 
near-confrontational tactics are Erik M's 
tools. He's not interested, finally, in building 
up nor sustaining a musical mood, as many 
droners do - he's more intent in assembling 
as much sonic information as he can within a 
miniaturist frame. His sounds are resolutely 
abstract, but never foreboding. This is work 
that stems from a real artistic commitment 
to difference - not merely being weird, but 
setting an agenda of rejecting the familiar 
and striving hard to locate, generate and excite 
new noises all the time. 


71 





The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


replaced by this soft-centred, easily-assimilated, 

f user-friendly 'modernism'. It would be wrong to 

blame Normandeau and his ilk for this, but Figures is 
one symptom of the inevitable process of descent 
into acceptability. Figures sounds somehow glib and 
facile, probably made using very expensive digital 
equipment, producing results that - rather than 
express the composer's vision - tend more to keep 
directors of contemporary arts centres happy, in the 
knowledge that they're supporting the avant-garde. 

Normandeau's sleeve notes reinforce the salon 
atmosphere, particularly on the 19-minute 'Venture', 
a 1998 work composed exclusively of samples from 
his progressive rock LP collection. Lord help us. In 
his notes, he keeps a straight face as he endorses 
Emerson Lake and Palmer, and in the music he 
inserts quotes from The Beatles - including (another 
irony) from John Lennon's 1 968 attempt at musique 
concrete, 'Revolution 9'. The Residents produced a 
far more effective demolition-job collage from 
Beatles records in the 1970s, occupied one-quarter 
of the time, and did it with a savagely sardonic sense 

Leduc's Voyage is pretty good. The off-putting factor 
for many prospective listeners will be the solemn 
intoning German voice - probably having the same 
effect on those countless millions of Pierre Henry 
fans whose faces dropped when they first heard his 
Apocalypse de Jean, one of his classic 'electronic 
oratorios', a ghastly combination of electronic noises 
with echoed voices which I'm sure I need hardly 
describe in further detail. However, Leduc does turn 
in some nice modified sound effects like rain falling (always a popular one with me, at any 
rate), trains passing by, and the electronic tones of phones ringing - with large slabs of added 
echo. The work intends, I assume, to evoke the frosty emotions and sensations of a hard 
Winter voyage, like perhaps Napoleon's retreat from Moscow (if he'd taken the train instead 
of riding on horseback). Despite moments of occasional stiffness Voyage D'hiver registers 
some partial success in this - but the composer may have kept his own heart in the fridge for 
a bit too long. 


Robert Normandeau 

Figures 

CANADA, EMPREINTES DIGITALES 
IMED9944 CD (1999) 


Daniel Leduc 

Le Voyage d'hiver 

CANADA, EMPREINTES DIGITALES 
IMED9945 CD (1999) 


ED PINSENT 


Two CDs' worth of good contemporary 
electroacoustic music here. Both composers 
are among many French-Canadian composers 
(of whom Frances Dhomont is near the 
forefront) making a pretty good living from this 
artform, which is almost ironic when you 
consider that at one stage musique concrete 
was considered too radical and challenging for 
any sort of public consumption. Like American 
novelists who live as writers in residence at big 
Universities, they have found a career thanks to 
top-level support from large academic 
organisations, arts councils, and 
corporate-sponsored competitions. 
Normandeau, for example, brought together 
other French-speaking composers and helped 
found the Canadian Electroacoustic Community 
in 1987 - of which Leduc has served as 
President. Both have won lots of awards in 
Europe, and received commissions from 
assorted contemporary arts centres in Canada. 

I think this label got started in the early 
1 990s...Chris Cutler was saying 'if the first few 
releases are symptomatic, [Empreintes 
Digitales] will be a valuable resource if it 
expands'. Lieux Inouis - Unheard Of Places - 
was among the first releases, an Acousmatic 
record from Robert Normandeau. 

His new one, Figures, has lots to recommend it, 
right from the opening onslaught of 
multi-layered laughter recordings which are 
immediately transformed from human voices 
into a babbling brook of mocking scorn. But 
there are also longeurs. Sometimes it shows 
how the adventurous spirit of early musique 
concrete has all but vanished now, to be 


Akos Rozmann 

Impulsions De tva, med tre instrument 

SWEDEN, FYLKINGEN RECORDS FYCD 1013 CD (1999; 


Rozmann is a Budapest-born composer who's spent much of his career in Stockholm. I was 
encouraged to learn he's the organist at the Catholic cathedral there, and hoped for some 
soul-stirring apocalyptic trumpet blasts from this CD. But this tape composition, sourced 
from instruments such as piano, zither, and organ - and mixed with human voices - is 
disappointing. Rozmann achieves some halfway decent moments of dark, melancholy 
insane-asylum keenings now and again, but overall this is another example of mediocre 
contemporary composition. The over-long 23 minute track ruined it for me, with its endless 
loopings of self-important sounding voices pronouncing their meaningless syllables as though 
they were reading from Herman Hesse. With laughably pretentious sleeve notes by 
Hans-Gunnar Peterson: 'Those who compose instrumental and vocal music according to 
historic paradigms are doomed to create art without originality or a nucleus of creative 
like-force', he burbles. 

ED PINSENT 

Box 170 44, SE-/04 62, Stockholm, Sweden 


Dedalus 

Pezzi Inediti 75-76 & Materiali per Tre Esecutori e Nastro 
Magnetico 

ITALY, ELICA UPP-3220 CD (1999) 

You or I may never have heard of Dedalus until now, but as careers go in the world of 
avant-garde music they had a pretty good innings in the 1 970s in Europe. This CD is their 
second LP in toto, preceded by a bunch of unissued tapes recorded a bit later that would 
have been their third LP. You could yearn for the grand years of the 1 970s when rock stars 
had intellectual leanings and high-minded ambitions! Dedalus dreamed of edifying their public, 
only to be told by one record company in Torino they were far too elite - 'your music is on 
the seventh floor and the audience is on the ground floor.. .you should go down a few floors 
at least'. They came from backgrounds of jazz and contemporary classical, and tried their 
utmost to combine the two in their unique music, citing such influences as jazz-rock combos 
Soft Machine, Nucleus and Miles Davis; Stockhausen and Webern from the classical 


The Sound 

avant-garde; Adorno and James Joyce from 
literature, and more besides - including Jean-Luc 
Godard, and Albert Einstein. It seems like a 
vanished world compared to today, when so 
many rock bands are intellectually 
undernourished, their paltry ambitions mostly 
centred on corporate sponsorship, stadium 
sell-outs and T-shirt deals, and shamelessly 
copying others - in fact, copying not the music 
of their contemporaries, but (through dress and 
pop video) merely the superficial trappings of 
each others' images. I shrivelled with distaste 
recently to see Steps posing in an expensive and 
self-indulgent photo shoot where (for no 
reason whatsoever) they emulated the dress 
and makeup of Gene Simmons from Kiss, and 
Britney Spears. 

The first eponymous LP of Dedalus was 
originally issued in late 1 973 on the T rident 
label in Milan, following their great success at an 
avant-garde music festival in Naples. The LP 
apparently received heavy airplay on Italian 
radio (hard to credit, really). They played 
concerts in Italy and later in France, including 
an early form of 'benefit' concert in 1974 - long 
before Rock Against Racism or Live Aid - 
except this one was campaigning in favour of a 
divorce referendum. The second LP Materiale... 
was released in 1975, and showed work led into 
new challenging areas mainly under the watchful 
eye of Fiorenzo Bonansone, the cellist and 
pianist who also introduced electronic music 
elements to the melange of noise and improv, 
and ended up composing most of the LP. What 
stands out in this remarkable record is the utter 
assurance with which Dedalus proceeded to 
assemble their challenging and unapproachable 
music. Using jazz instruments like the Fender 
Rhodes electric piano and saxophone, 
traditional ones like the accordion, and splicing 
everything together with insane tape edits and 
absurdist bursts of electronic composition, they 
delivered a set of astoundingly coherent 
statements that withstand scrutiny today. Even 
British Art rock of the same period - Henry 
Cow is our nearest equivalent - might sound a 
tad hesitant besides such confidence, and 
certainly less extreme. And Dedalus partially 
succeeded in bringing this music to a wider 
audience (the second LP sold in the thousands, 
not the hundreds), perhaps not on the same 
scale as Soft Machine and King Crimson, but it's 
a track record anyone could be proud of. I 
suppose their image may have been a partial 
stumbling block to success. The four 
photographs of the band inside the wrapper 
should have you muttering 'Open University 
maths module four' in about two seconds flat 

This CD has been put together following the 
revival of Dedalus in the 1990s. They tried live 
concerts in Italy in the mid 1990s, allowing 
various other like-minded musicians to join in, 
and managed a final LP Pia Visione as a private 
pressing. This CD is another revelation and 
another triumph from Andrea Cernotto and 
friends, who are also behind the excellent 
Nepless label. 

ED PINSENT 

Oren Ambarchi 

Insulation 

TOUCH T33.16 CD (2000) 

An excellent solo work from this Sydney-based 
musician, this one with a domestic release, 
following closely on the heels of his solo record 
Stacte, which he released as a vinyl LP on his 


Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 

own Jerker Productions label last year. Another guitar record this, but much more fully 
realised and coherent as a work of art. I I segments of guitar tape-work are presented 
together as pretty much a single suite. This music is not noise and it's not feedback! If 
anything it is modern electro-acoustic treatments, of sounds whose origin happens to be a 
guitar - a guitar in the hands of a gifted player, no doubt, but here we've got something as far 
removed from any kind of conventional guitar 'playing' as you could wish for. With the 
possible exception of the more recent work of Robert Fripp, who has extensively treated his 
solos with two Revox tape recorders in a live setting for his Soundscape series. 

Realising three of these tracks with the aid of Matthew Thomas, Oren is in fact 'playing' his 
amplifier, his filters, his echo unit and studio (especially the overdub facility) as much as his 
'axe'. Steadfastly refusing any normal or recognisable or familiar sounds, Oren arranges a 
series of non-specific bass throbs, underwatery squelches, clacks and echoes, and spaceship 
motor whines within a sort of vague, rhythmical pattern. Effective it emphatically is - very 
quickly, you'll find yourself immersed in this astonishing world and lost within a land of 
wonder and mystery. Skip to track five, 'Simon', if your desire is to hear a masterful nod of 
the trilby to Pierre Schaeffer, for here we have what I think must be backwards tapes and that 
haunting muted klang that evokes an old grandfather clock chime. Or the eight track, called 
simply 'Study No 3', if all-out mayhem is your bag - this one is a constantly fragmenting 
kaleidoscope featuring collage and layers in a hyperactive whirl. Elsewhere, the more solid 
'throbby' tracks might suggest a stripped down form of Techno to true lovers of the genre. 

This issue lends itself well to the Jon Wozencroft packaging which is such a distinctive feature 
of the Touch series. He's gone for a blue-and-turquoise key, fitting for this very 
contemporary Blues record, for that's what it is - there is true emotion here, and it's 
melancholy in tone. The final track 'L'eclisse' is dedicated to the artist's father, and it's an 
achingly poignant valediction. 

ED PINSENT 



Ralf Wehowsky / Lionel Marchetti 

Vier Vorspiele / L'Oeil retourne 

GERMANY, SELEKTION SCD 026 CD (1998) 

Very beautiful this. It's a sublime 24 minute piece of electro-acoustic composition by 
Marchetti, preceded by an equally sublime 'version' of same as interpreted by Wehowsky. 

Ralf Wehowsky is the main guy behind the RLW five CD set, reviewed elsewhere, and whose 
credentials as a major player in the modern sound-art stakes are fast becoming hard to 
ignore. In his 1 7-minute take on Marchetti's 'statement', he added voices by Dorothea 
Conradi and quotes from one of his own earlier releases, Moraine's Eyes - then boiled the 
whole effusion together in his kitchen, in a large copper cauldron. What strikes you in both 
these works - though especially in RLW's - is the sheer depth and intensity of their listening 
skills. Work of this grandeur only comes about, I suspect, through hours of sheer 
meditational listening, clearing the mind of clutter and examining these microscopic textures 
and miniature landscapes utilising the intense staring eye-beams of the ear. That is 
preparatory groundwork. The actual time spent on the execution - or even the methods used 
- could be relatively insignificant, compared to the time set aside for preparation. It’s like the 
perfection required in the stages of an Alchemical operation. 

The utter deliberation in the choice of sounds and their sequencing is evident - no careless 
rag-bag of 'anything goes' collision-editing here. Thus, a series of dramatic and striking 
dynamics result within these miniaturist works, even if there are vast emptinesses of silence 
which are treated as music also, and even if some of the sounds are so imperceptible they can 
only be noticed when they cease! For example, there's a compelling muffled and spectral 
drumbeat somewhere lurking underneath a range of top-strata noises that could be coming 
from the next room - or from another dimension, because it's simply bewitching. If I’m 
starting to become philosophical, it's the wisdom of the musical teachers speaking through 
this disc, and no wisdom of my own, believe me. 

The second and equally appealing facet to be cherished in this sublime work is the unearthly 
dreaminess of it - dream-like transcendent sounds that are only usually found in the sweetest 
dreams and fade in an instant as you reluctantly awake to face the dawn - this CD comes 
close to evoking such moments, and does it with the gentlest of touches, akin perhaps to the 
cinema of ultra-obscure UK avant-garde film-maker David Larkin or the slightly more 
well-known visual artist/boxmaker Joseph Cornell. High praise indeed but more than fully 
justified when faced when such ethereal and resplendent music making of this magnitude. 

The Marchetti piece - which to complete the symmetry of the work contains some RLW 
samples in the mix - was composed in Lyon in 1995 and 1997, and includes 'citations-collages' 
from, among other things, Bruno and Lionel taking a walk in the mountains and 'diverse 
radiophonic accidents'. Apart from human voices and radio voices, the majority of the 
sources and quotes actually remain unrecognisable and untraceable, yet they bear little 
evidence of much processing or intervention from the creators. Art conceals art. A couple of 
grand masters of the form at work. 

ED PINSENT 


73 




The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 

Various Artists " p 77 ■ = 

mm mono th c 

WORLD SERPENT WSCD025 CD I 1,1V! IVIIU IIV 

TTi^tftle is not, as one might, suspect, 1^003110118 0 

an abbreviation of 'mmmm... listening u I .->4^. 

to this album has really cheered me — v | || | I 

up, I think I'll pop down to the shops LJLJLJLJ I I U L4 

for some crisps and alolly'. No. It's J ^ 

2,000 in Roman numerals and this is a UlbLUIIITUri □□□□ 


mm mono in 

WORLD SERPENT WSCD025 CD 1 1 I 

® in\/nrat 

The title is not, as one might, suspect, II IV v 

an abbreviation of 'mmmm... listening ^ g 

to this album has really cheered me JV " 

up, I think I'll pop down to the shops UJLJLJtJ V^# X \ 
for some crisps and a' lolly'. No. It's f \ wy%. m g 

2,000 in Roman numerals and this is a III I 1 1 I I I 

compilation commemorating the 
Millennium sent to loyal World 
Serpent fans. And I got one too. All 

your favourites are here. Algiz, Backworld, Darkwood, and of course, 
the one and only Dawn & Dusk Entwined, fresh from a stint as house 
band on Bruce's P/ay Your Cards Right., and yes, I know sarcasm is 
said to be the lowest form of wit. Well. There's nothing that actually 
stinks here, but I'm using the definition of stinks which is applied when 
no-one in the whole world could possibly approve. I'm sure there's 
folks somewhere, possibly wearing black clothes, who all but soiled 
themselves with excitement when this dropped through the letter box 
bringing EXCLUSIVE tracks by Pantaleimon and Bryin Dali. To be fair, 
Der Blutarsch, Cyclobe, Leutha, and Tor Lundvall turn in half-decent 
numbers distinguished by the fact that they fail to merge into the 
amorphous fog that is the rest of the album. The amorphous fog in 
question can be broken down into a series of vaguely folky, pseudo 
mediaeval acoustic gothy numbers. It's all beautifully recorded - 
plucked acoustic guitar and resonant cellos captured with crystal 
clarity, kettle drums reverberating around the halls of Valhalla - but y' 
know, how many more of these miserable fuckers do we need? 

They're not making great art, at least not any great art that hasn't 
already been done much better, and probably by someone else on 
World Serpent. They're not helping anyone. As P.J. O'Rourke 
observed, nothing was ever solved by being serious about it, and even 
Boyd Rice likes a laugh - every now and then. I mean - I ask you - one 
group here is called The Soil Bleeds Black. Well, I'll bet they go down 
a storm at the British Legion on Thursdays sandwiched between Stan 
Presley's Glitterdust All-Stars and The Amazing Rita. The day I let a 
group called The Soil Bleeds Black Into my record collection is the day 
I take my pasty white ass to a rap gig in a Vanilla Ice T-Shirt and stand 

at the bar dining on crisps and 

pop, exclaiming 'what a spiffingly 
wizard natural sense of rhythm 
you chaps have.' 

So, not quite full marks then. If 
you enjoy nothing better than 
wearing black clothes, fannying 
about with runes, and taking 
yourself extremely seriously then I 
can recommend nothing more 
highly than taking yourself down to 
the local army recruitment office 
and signing yourself up. Failing that, 
you've probably already got this 
compilation, or something else 
that's virtually identical, so nothing 
I could say is likely to knock any 
sense into you. Myself, I'm off to 
cleanse myself of this experience 
with the collected works of Snoop 
Dogg. 

WAR ARROW 


Muslimgauze this ain't. However, this 


red vinyl pressing with a decorative 


label and fiery red and black sleeve is 


very rich in atmospherics, and 


contains more actual real 


instrument-playing than any ambient / 


electronic record that claims the same 


richness. Plus there s the highly 


unusual instrumentation, including 


trombone, flute, tapes, guitars, 


squawkbox', and unidentified secret 


trademark devices known only as 


Things'. The power of exotic 


suggestion, to be sure. 


The first side, comprising three segued tracks is beaten hands down by 


the side-long very dynamic B-Side, called simply Flight of Re , and it 


gets my vote because the sound is treated with strange electronic 


effects and achieves that elusive feeling of music that's somehow very 
hard to place - you don't know where it's coming from, how long it 
lasts, or who is playing it. That, to me, is a pretty desirable and 
admirable achievement, because it subverts the idea of common sense 
and linear causality that rules the lives of most of us, if we allow the 
anti-imagination forces to have their way. In the final analysis though, 


Voice Of Eye strike me as just a tad too solemn and self-important to 


merit repeated listening. This is music made by real hard-core 


anchorites, the St Bertha and St Joseph of the Oil Drum! They exhibit 


a certain indifference to the audience, which can sometimes betoken a 


high-minded dedication to one's muse - but here it seems more like 


petulant arrogance 


ED PINSENT 


Voice Of Eye 

Live 

USA, ANOMALOUS RECORDS DV940604, VINYL LP (1995) 


Very curious, pseudo-ethnic sounding record taken from rare live 
performances (in 1994, in SF and LA) by Bonnie McNairn and Jim 
Wilson, the singular duo collectively forming Voice Of Eye. At best, it's 
an off-centred bit of meandering Shanai solos, enriched by bizarre 
tonal and electronic backdrops, wailing away against light and lilting 
drumbeat loops suggestive of a three-legged camel ridden by the duo 
on their first trip abroad, while Richard Bishop is leading the caravan. 
At worst, what this record resembles is third-rate soundtrack music 
from a straight-to-video thriller set in the Middle East. No, 


74 

























The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 




□□□□ 

Current 93 

I Have A Special Plan 
For This World 

DURTRO/WORLD SERPENT 
DURTRO 048CD CD (2000) 

I have to confess, I've never quite been 
down with Current 93. Nature 
Unveiled impressed me; it must surely 
remain one of the most relentlessly 
malignant records ever made. 'Summer 
Of Love' is a fantastic song, although of 
course it was actually an old Blue 
Oyster Cult number. Death In June's 
finest work seems to have come from 


I Have A Special Plan For This World shows that either I've not. been 
paying attention properly, or by the Lord Harry, the boy's cracked it! 
The album consists of a single lengthy piece of music, based around a 
slowly repeating keyboard line swimming around in a dense soup of 
effects. Tibet delivers a lengthy monologue falling somewhere between 
symbolist poetry and apocalyptic dementia. I often suspect he's been 
born into the wrong age and would've been more at home living a 
hundred years ago. David Tibet makes more sense as a contemporary 
of Aubrey Beardsley, Richard Dadd or Odilon Redon, than Madonna, 
Damien Hirst and Timmy Mallet. Nothing here dispels this conviction. 
To be frank, I haven't got a fucking clue what he's talking about, but it 
doesn't seem to matter, the cumulative effect of the words and music 
is quite intense enough as it is thank you very much. Steve Stapleton 
makes his presence felt. There is a strong suggestion that Stapleton 
logistics inform much of what's going on; the jarring juxtaposition of 
studio and portable cassette machine as recording media; the digitised 
butchery of Tibet's voice that creeps in at the end; the way the whole 
thing doesn't follow familiar rules of composition. 


/ Have A Special Plan For This World sounds like how I'd always 
hoped Current 93 would. Darkly intelligent and rich in unsettling 
imagery used in making some esoteric point, rather than just for the 
sake of putting the wind up a few easily flustered Sunday school 
teachers. There's a lot of groups messing about with vaguely arcane 
imagery seemingly just so that black-clothed misery-obssessed 
teenagers can have something to spend their pocket money on. 
Happily, Current 93 have nothing to do with their ilk, as is evident 
from this powerful and convincing statement. Mr, Tibet, I raise my hat 
in your general direction. 

WAR ARROW 


Current 93 

All Dolled Up Like Christ 

DURTRO NO NUMBER 2 X CD 
(1999) 


Death in June 

“Heilige!” 

NER NEROZ 43 CD (1999) 


Der Blutharsch 

Gold Gab Ich Fur Eisen 

WKN 7 CDA/IDEO, (1999) 

Live performances by these 
heavyweights of the World Serpent 
roster are frustratingly rare these days, 
in the UK at least, so the appearance of 
this batch of concert documents is to 
be welcomed. However, they are a 
decidedly uneven bunch, with two of 
them raising some distinctly unwelcome 
questions, as we shall see. 


Another pretentious statement on the 'interface' between electronic 
music and modern warfare methods, and the dull droning throbs here 
are starting to make that concept look a little old hat. The incredibly 
crass sleeve art - a skull surrounded by international danger symbols 
and a stupid slogan which reads 'Command, Control, Communications, 
Computing and Intelligence' - does not help one bit, reducing that 
whole area of research to another, rather silly cliche. And to my great 
amazement, I learn that Joe Banks - foremost in serious academic 
study of this area - is associated with this misbegotten thing. The other 
two members of C4I are John Everall, who's produced many a 
nondescript electric non-event in his Tactile guise; and the lumpen 
Ashley Davies, whose CV is, let's be frank, nothing much to be proud 
of - Project D.A.R.K., Headbutt and Chemical Plant, not names firmly 
associated with great quality control in their voluminous output. I 
think the three met up at Stockholm in 1998 at a music festival and, 
with a large cheque from Staalplaat waved under their noses, decided 
this collab might be a good idea. It 
ain't. Stick with Disinformation 
records, dear listener, and pretend this 
abortion never existed. 


ED PINSENT 


down in a studio. 


the period when David Tibet was a 
member. And let's not forget that 
Current 93 have given some excellent 
live performances, allowing David 
Tibet's 'malevolent panto' persona full 
reign in taking over an entire venue. 
Apart from these, what little recorded 
work I've heard always seems to take 
the form of acoustic whimsy with Tibet 
singing in a manner suspiciously 
reminiscent of the vocalisations of the 
occupants of Bagpuss's mouse organ. 
One minute you're bracing yourself for 
what bizarre intimations might unfold 
from an album entitled Swastikas For 
Noddy. Next your head is flooded with 
unrequested visuals of animated toy 
mice trying to shift a frying pan to a 
squeaky chorus of 'Heave' Heave! 
Heave!' David Tibet has always come 
across as an original thinker with some 
fine Ideas, but for me at least, his vision, 
whatever it may be, seems notoriously 
elusive when it comes to pinning it 


□ □□□ 

C4I 

Copenacre 

NETHERLANDS, STAALPLAAT 
STCD 142 CD (1999) 

Not good - it pains me to state that this turned out to be a real 
stinkeroonie. Those guilty are a trio of UK players, who should have 
known better, collaborating for the first time and brought together by 
their presence together at one of the ubiquitous modern music 
festivals that are over-running the planet. Copenacre is a pallid, 
indifferent set of electronic noises, with many a yawn-worthy cliche 
drawn from the worlds of ambient and industrial - you want noises like 
steel gates clanging, noises like evil factories working into the night, 
noises like icy winds blowing across a bleak landscape, noises like 
sheets of glass breaking, and bursts of static electricity? Here they all 
are in a one-stop shopping mall of sound...every one of 'em calculated 
to press the 'alienation' button in the mind of an indiscriminate 
listener. 


The Current 93 double CD was 
recorded at two concerts In New 
York in 1996, and sees an extended 
line-up of the group perform many 
songs from the back catalogue, 
including some rarely heard live. 

These concerts were clearly major 
events; the performances are lyrical 
and passionate, and the audiences 
respond with unbridled enthusiasm. 

It's strange how such simple songs can 
express so much. 'The Blue Gates of 
Death' consists of nothing more than a 
voice, a simple strummed guitar figure 
and 'la-la' backing vocals, yet it evokes 
unfathomable depths of anguish and 
sorrow. Elsewhere, restrained 
touches of violin and woodwind add 
colour and heighten the elegiac tone. 

A triad of nocturnes from the bleak Of 
Ruine Or Some Blazing Starre album is 
followed on the first disc by the 
exquisitely lilting ‘A Sadness Song’, and on the second by the manic 
pirouette of 'Oh Coal Black Smith'. 

Central to all of this is David Tibet's remarkable voice, in which he 
delivers his mystical texts in tones ranging from the purest caress to 
the most fevered howl; an insidious, discomforting encroachment. 

Tibet’s one-time allv Do ug las P. has released “Hei/igef” his first neek 
over the parapet since being expelled from World Serpent. The 
military metaphor is appropriate, since Death in June seem to be 
abandoning their formerly ambivalent aesthetic in favour of an ever 
less equivocal stance. Unusually, Pearce appears unmasked on the 
front cover, sporting a soldier's helmet and brandishing a wineglass 
engraved with the Totenkopf symbol. The inside picture has him 
wearing a gasmask and holding the wineglass waggishly aloft, toasting 
the album's dedicatees: 'to all those who fight in isolation'. It's an 
empty slogan and a faintly ridiculous image, far removed from the 
seductive anonymity of earlier DIJ cover art. 

A statement posted on the World Serpent website gave their side of 
the story; that the split was mostly over business conflicts, but that 
'there were also personal reasons, including political reasons'. The 
exact nature of these reasons is likely to remain a mystery — although 
Pearce's ever closer links with Albin Julius, of whom more later, may 
provide a clue - but World Serpent could with equal justification have 
cited musical reasons. “Heilige !" (available from BM June, London 
WC I N 3XX), a recording of a concert in Melbourne last year, is sadly 
lacking in imagination and creativity. Pearce and his cohorts (Albin 
Julius and John Murphy) appear content to trot out perfunctory 
readings of acoustic-based material, with barely a pause as one 
indifferently delivered ballad follows another. 

The noisier, more martial pieces fare somewhat better. The massed 
percussive attack is still impressive, and the sound samples rich and 
evocative; but they are interspersed with insipid orchestral flourishes 
and Pearce's doggedly artless phrasing. As the inevitable, over-familiar 
and quite possibly offensive 'C'est Un Reve' closes proceedings, the 
overall impression is one of stagnation and routine. 

One band that has not yet been expelled from World Serpent is Der 
Blutharsch, and on the evidence of this release it's difficult to 
understand why. Gold Gab Ich Fur Eisen is a fairly lavish CD/video 
box set, again recorded live, that does nothing to allay the suspicion 
that Mr Julius and his mates are apologists for the far right. The 
artwork depicts a soldier gazing heroically into the distance, his shield 
bearing a flash that owes more to the SS than to Throbbing Gristle. 

The music itself is an efficient mix of keyboards, tapes and martial 
percussion, which acts as the bedrock for some highly dubious 
vocalising. 'Honour and Pride' is a typical example, and you know that 
when the call of 'God Punish England' goes up they're not just out for 
revenge over the 1966 World Cup Final. The video, meanwhile, ends 
with the ignorant and offensive cry of 'Free Pinochet'. 

I understand that Mr Julius is Austrian, and therefore likely to be 
pleased with recent political developments in that country. Like many 
of his fellow citizens, he seems to believe that the problems of the 
present can be solved by reverting to a murderous and thoroughly 
discredited ideology of the past. This belief is not only wrong, it is also 
ignoble and dangerous. 

RICHARD REES JONES 


Coil 

Astral Disaster 

THRESHOLD HOUSE/WORLD 
SERPENT LOCI CD14 CD (2000) 

My initial experience of this was not 
entirely favourable. I notice on the 
cover, amongst the lists of instruments 
ascribed to certain members of the 
group, are finger symbols, 
thoughtforms, and obsidian mirrors. I'm 
prepared to make exceptions - like on 
that Headbutt album, where Elvina 
Flower is credited as playing floor tom, 
snare, boys, sweets, and puppies - but 
humour aside, it really gets on my tits 
to read a record cover and discover 
that the instrumentation stretches to 
period indication, smoke chamber and 
entropic verisimilitude. So, did you use 
a banjo or what, you pretentious 
arseholes!? Whether I'm 
underestimating Coil or not, I couldn't help but raise a sceptical 
eyebrow at the mention of obsidian mirrors as some creative tool. 
Would this be of the kind, commonly referred to in the original 
Nahuatl as tezcatli, favoured by cultures of pre-Hispanic Mexico, I 
wondered. Would this be the polished volcanic glass mirror which 
gives its name to the Gods Tezcatlipoca, Tezcatlanextia, 
Tezcatzontecatl and of course the Goddess Tezcacoacayopechtli ! 
wondered, the implement commonly held to represent the surface of 
the Earth, and believed to serve as a conduit to the more substantial 
realms of the Gods, of which noumenal reality is but a pale reflection? 
Or was it just something you saw in your Hamlyn's Bumper Book of 
Mythology that sounded cool? Begrudgingly I listened to the CD right 
up until the line about 'Egyptian Aztecs from Norway' whereupon i 
gave up and, resisting the impulse to hurl the disc across the room, 
retired to the lounge in order to catch up on the latest developments 
in Brookside Close. Aztecs! Aztecs! Fucking Aztecs! They weren't 
called Aztecs, UNLESS of course you're specifically referring to the 
ancestral migrant group who changed their tribal appellation to 
Mexitin upon leaving Aztlan, their island home suspected to have been 
somewhere in the region of Nayarit in Western Mexico. I know I 
shouldn’t be such a pompous arse, but this general attitude of World 
Mythology as a homogenous melting pot of source material for the use 
of pop stars on occasions when they want to sound a bit mysterious, is 
often insulting and condescending to the originating cultures to the 
extent that I curse the draconian laws of this country that frown upon 
the dispensation of street justice with fire arms. 

Anyway, after a particularly gripping episode of my preferred soap, 
during which Baby Spice lookalike Emily revealed her devious plans to 
break into the Farnham's house, much to the discomfort of the noble 
Tinhead, I returned to Astral Disaster in a calmer frame of mind. And 
damn it - it's pretty flawless as far as the music is concerned. Coil have 
been known to fall on their arses at times, but when it comes to this 
sort of layered drifting psychological stuff, it's difficult to find fault with 
them. These cathedrals of sound seem to stretch out into infinity that 
moment of realisation that every Lovecraft character experiences 
when it becomes evident that the shapeless tentacled abomination in 
the cellar was once Mr Thompson from the pie shop. It's an 
atmosphere which at once manages to be cloying AND spacious to 
agoraphobic degrees by virtue of Coil's considerable skill at creating a 
sense of drama without resorting to the obvious strategies. Their dark 
tableau is presented In a manner made all the more impressive by its 
lack of blokes running around in devil costumes quoting Venom 
records at each other. 'The Mothership & The Fatherland’ is in 
particular a monolithic invocation of existential discomfort, with the 
slow drum beats echoing away in such vividly recorded detail that you 
forget you're listening to a CD. Even The Sea Priestess' impresses with 
its epic gothic choir and politely delivered surrealist monologue, so 
much so that I can forgive the bollocks about 'Egyptian Aztecs'. After 
all, the tale in question is, I would imagine, intended to reproduce the 
skewed logic of the subconscious, if the mention of a Tibetan coastline 
is an indication, so I suppose in getting irate. I'm only making myself 
look stupid. That's me told. Of its kind, Astral Disaster is perhaps not 
so potent as the Current 93 disc reviewed elsewhere, but it has its 
moments, and no doubt I will be playing it again. 

WAR ARROW 



76 


New 


from a curiously studious wing of the British underground... 

WAR DRUM 

Macuilli Acatl 

a 24 minute cassette from Racing Room 

War Arrow and his team of diligent scholars make their 
offering - four songs and two instrumentals - six pieces of 
dramatic reconstruction focusing on the lives of the 
Mesoamericans. 

Price: £2 / $4 postpaid worldwide 
Racing Room 

37EgmontRd, New Maiden, Surrey, KT34AT, UK 
racingroom@btinternet.com payment to K.LYNN 



Distribution 

Has Moved 

P.0, BOX 5150 



but our web-site remains the same 


www . netcomuk . co . uk/-pj wild/f isheye . html 


e-mail ' : f isheyelnetcomuk . co . uk 



.Two sides of swirling nighttime jazz. 
.Available on long playing vinyl only. 


.£7 [uk] £8 [europe] £9 [usa] £9.50 [row], 

Fisheye Distribution : PO Box 5790. 
.WITHAM : Essex. 

.CM8 2GA : UK. 
fisheye@netcomuk.co.uk 
www.netcomuk.co.uk/~pjwild/fisheye.html 

.cheques to P. Wild. 

.wholesale inquiries welcome. 

.64pg catalogue also available. - 
p. .. [SAE for details] 



STAALPLAAT AUDIO-GALERIE 

YOU DON ’T HAVE TO CALL IT 
MUSIC IF THE TERM SHOCKS YOU! 

b b S% b| 

Rosenthaler Str. 39 
10178 Berlin 

T: +49-30-44 34 02 90 
F: +49-30-44 34 02 91 
E: berlin@staalplaat.com 
open: 

Tii - Fr ^4.00 - 20.00 
Sa 12.00 -17.00 


77 


The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


The Recorded 
Works of 

AKIRA 

IFUKUBE 


Of these, only the piece Prisms by Karen Tanaka (b 
1961) is nothing more than eminently forgettable and 
utterly disposable noise; some colleague really should 
have informed her that this kind of sonic doodling 
became obsolete after 1975 when the claims of the 
avant-garde had finally been proved fraudulent. Yuzo 
Toyama is better known as a conductor while Atsutada 
Otaka is the lesser known brother of conductor 
Tadaaki Otaka. These works are worth our attention 
but only the Folkloric Suite by Kaoru Wada deserves 
repeated plays. When I hear this suite I want to invade 
someone else's country - loudly. 

It is the Ifukube work that concerns us here, of course. 
At 1 6 minutes it is the longest piece of the disc. The 
Symphonic Ballet (the Italian title Ballata Sinfonica is 
used on the CD booklet), in two movements, is an 
early work composed not long after the Japanese 
Rhapsody, the work which made his name as a 
composer in Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong. 

The pensive aura that pervades the whole piece, even in 
its lively first movement, is due to the inspiration of the 


By Andy Martin 

AKIRA IFUKUBE WAS BORN IN 1914 AND educated in 
Hokkaido on the high plain of Shiyaanruru where he 
encountered and became fascinated by Ainu folk music. 
He studied forestry at the Imperial Hokkaido University 
and was initially self-taught as a composer. 

His first work to achieve national recognition was 
Japanese Rhapsody of 1937, which won the Teherepnin 
Prize. During the war he worked as a scientific advisor on 
the study of the vibrational strength and elasticity of 
wood, but due to illness that resulted from his exposure 
to radiation in certain experiments he had to resign from 
forestry. From 1946 to 1953 he taught orchestration at 
the Tokyo National University for Music and Fine Arts 
(Geidai). In 1974 he became professor at the Tokyo 
College of Music and from 1975 to 1987 he was 
president of that college. From 1987 onwards he was the 
president of the Institute for Ethnomusicology at the 
Tokyo College of Music. He published a treatise on 
orchestration Kangengaku-Ho in 1933, revised 1968. 

Unfortunately, Ifukube is primarily known in the west as 
'the man who wrote the music for most of the Godzilla 
films'. Exhilarating though much of that music may be, it 
fails to take into account the serious music he has 
composed and that he is a classical composer first and 
foremost. It should be noted that to be a composer of 
film music in Japan does not automatically impart a status 
that implies denigration - as is the case in European 
culture. 

His most popular works in Europe are his Symphonic 
Ballet, the Sinforia Tapkara of 1 954, the Symphonic 
Fantasia (basically because it contains virtually all the main 
themes and material used in his Godzilla films) and the 
sublime cantata based on the life of Siddhartha Gotama 
563-483 BC, Gotama The Buddha of 1989 for choir and 
orchestra, which is, beyond all doubt, one of the most 
significant choral works ever composed. 

The Swedish label BIS, famous for its cycle of rare works 
by the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, entered the rarely 
explored arena of Japanese music in 1990 with five works 
by five composers that span a period of four decades. 

Akira Ifukube; Ballata Sinfonica (1943) 

Karen Tanaka: Prisms ( 1 984) 

Yuzo Toyama: Matsura (1982) 

Atsutada Otaka: Image (1981) 

Kaoru Wada: Folkloric Dance Suite (1987) 

The Maimo Symphony Orchestra conducted by Junichi 
Hirokami. 


work: it was written shortly after the death of his 
brother from radiation poisoning and is dedicated to his memory. The plaintive 
melody of the oboe that floats over and through much of the second movement 
leaves little to the imagination, and while this is hardly the best piece with which to 
introduce Ifukube to a new audience, it provides a welcome change from the more 
ebullient pages of his film scores with which we are more familiar. 

The performance by the Maimo Symphony Orchestra (a Swedish ensemble) is 
polished, if not especially inspired, while the young Japanese conductor Junichi 
Hirokami deserves credit for his attention to detail, particularly the manner in 
which he ensures the woodwind are not swamped by the strings, a fault that many 
orchestral recordings display, especially in American orchestras. 

The sound quality is exemplary, but then this is simply the high standard we have 
now come to expect from this label, although some listeners may find it a little 
clinical and lacking in warmth. 

The excellent sleeve notes are written by one of the featured composers, Kaoru 
Wada. 



In 1 990 the King Record Company of Tokyo issued a series of ten CDs under the 
collective title 'Contemporary Japanese Music'. It therefore came as a surprise to 
me to discover that much of the music featured on the first and second discs was 
composed between 1 930 and 1 960. The complete set provides an excellent 
introduction to modern Japanese music, although some of the pieces on the later 
CDs are of variable quality, especially those written in an avant-garde idiom. 

Rhapsodic is the first disc of the set and features five works by three composers. It 
is of interest to compare the two works by Yuzo Toyama with his contribution to 
the BIS CD reviewed above, especially since these two are far preferable to his later 
opus. The real discovery is the Koyama work, which is a delightful suite of 
miniatures that capture the essence of traditional Japanese folk themes filtered 
through the medium of a western orchestra. These three works are adequately 
executed by the NHK Symphony Orchestra under their modern music stalwart 
Hiroyuki Iwaki, a name one immediately associates with modern Japanese music of 
quality. 

Y uzo T oyama: Rhapsody ( 1 960) 

Yuzo Toyama: Berceuse (1953) 

Kiyoshige Koyama: Kobiki-Uta (1957) 

Akira Ifukube: Ballata Sinfonica (1943) 

Akira Ifukube: Sinfonia Tapkara ( 1 954) 

At a total duration of 46 minutes, the two Ifukube works provide over two thirds of 
the contribution to this CD, and are easily the most convincing both in terms of 
their orchestration and their thematic development. Here the Tokyo Symphony 
Orchestra, under Yukinori Tezuka (a new name to me), offer a rather more 
puissant account of the Symphonic Ballet which I personally prefer to the somewhat 
stark, clinical version by Junichi Hirokami, despite the slightly abrasive brass playing 
(a frequent problem with Japanese orchestras) and thin string tone. 

It is for the 30 minute Sinfonia Tapkara (or Tapkara Symphony) that I purchased 
this disc, and the work certainly deserves repeated plays, for it does not yield many 


78 




The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


of its secrets at first hearing. There are three movements 
in a fast-slow-fast structure, the first of which is preceded 
by a slow introduction. Tapkara is an area of Japan rich in 
folklore that directly informs the inspiration behind the 
work if not the music itself and is therefore similar in this 
respect to, say, The Karelia Suite by Sibelius or Taras 
Bulba by Leos Janacek However, there are few Japanese 
themes here and the quality of the music is epic rather 
than folkloric. All three movements contain music that is 
very similar in style and idiom to that used in the first 
Godzilla film although this may well be because both date 
from the same year. The sound quality is reasonable, 
warm but rather murky in places, although I am relieved 
to see that these are studio performances since many of 
the later CDs are taken from live concerts. The sleeve 
notes (which are in Japanese, with no English translation) 
are extremely disappointing, but this is the case for all ten 
CDs of this set. For example, two paragraphs are 
required to write much but actually say very little about 
the 6 minute Rhapsody by Toyama while just 3 lines are 
devoted to the 30 minute Tapkara Symphon/. 

LABEL: THE KING RECORD COMPANY (JAPAN) 
CATALOGUE NO: KICC 2011 (1990) 

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆■ft - 

For anyone who is interested in the music by which Akira 
Ifukube is most easily recognised in Europe, this disc is an 
excellent place to start. Called Godzilla: Volume / it 
features selections of the music composed for a curious 
series of science fiction / horror films made in Japan 
between 1 954 and 1 975. Be warned: it contains music by 
other 'composers' which features trite, trivial 'pop' music 
designed to appeal to Japanese teenagers and is therefore 
of no aesthetic value. 'Gojira' is the Japanese name for a 
playful, rather cute and cuddlesome giant reptile known 
in the west by the more familiar appellation 'Godzilla'. 

The featured music of Ifukube accounts for nearly 45 
minutes duration so the disc is worth your purchase. A 
second warning is required with regard to the sound 
quality but this is hardly the fault of either the record 
label or the original performers, since music recorded for 
films during the 1950s was created in extremely primitive 
conditions on equipment that today would probably be 
scorned by a punk rock group. 

Those with programmable disc players should listen to 
the Ifukube pieces as a 45 minute suite, since in this 
manner the irritating other pieces are avoided and the 
recording quality imperceptibly improves as we move 
into the 1960s. The rate of technological improvement 
can be witnessed most dramatically if you play the first 
track on the CD followed by the final track from 1 975. 

Eight films are featured for which Ifukube supplied the 
music and mostly substantial extracts are used. There are 
particularly fine moments, too, such as the superbly 
serene song from Gojira Versus Mothra and the 
memorable march from All Monsters Charge (known in 
Europe as Destroy AH Monsters) that makes me want to 
invade someone else's country - noisily. I have given the 
direct translations of the original Japanese titles for a 
reason that is no doubt deeply profound but escapes me 
just now. 

Gojira ( 3/1 1/54) 

Gojira Versus King Kong ( I 1 181 62) 

Gojira Versus Mothra (29/4/64) 

Three Great Monsters (20/ 1 2/64) 

Great Monster War (19/12/65) 

All Monsters Charge ( I /8/68) 

Gojira Versus Gigan ( 1 2/3/72) 

Mechagojira Counterattack ( 1 5/3/75) 


Although not stated anywhere on the sleeve (the notes are hardly informative), the 
music is performed by the Toho Studio Orchestra and Choir, usually under the 
direction of Ifukube himself. The string sound is frequently thin and ragged although 
the brass has a timbre that is unusually full and warm, a sound one normally 
associates with top quality European ensembles. There is the occasional 
impertinence of electronic filtering on some tracks but this was common even in 
classical film scores in Japan at the time and does not generally impose itself on the 
listener. 

There is a companion to this disc ( Godzilla : Volume 2) which features the film 
music composed by Ifukube and others from 1 975 to 1 984 although I have yet to 
hear it. 

LABEL: SILVA SCREEN (GREAT BRITAIN) 

CATALOGUE NO.: FILMCD 201 


dft/e.' &tzta/zza. , ^9.99.9j 

If you are as yet unfamiliar with the work of Ifukube or have only heard his music 
for Gojira then this disc is the best place to commence further investigation. To 
date this is the only CD available in the west that is entirely devoted to works by 
Ifukube. 

The first piece, Symphonic Fantasia , is just under 15 minutes long and is scored for a 
conventional orchestra. The real surprise here is that he has taken all the best and 
most memorable thematic material from his 'Gojira' film scores and constructed an 
orchestral tone poem of tremendous exuberance that makes me want to invade 
someone else's country - violently. This really is a fine little piece that enables one 
to enjoy all that is especially moving in the film music but with professional 
performance standards with proportionate sound quality. 

For me it is the second piece that made me eternally grateful that War Arrow had 
introduced me to the work of this man. As a student of Buddhism I am inevitably 
going to be interested in such a work as this Symphonic Ode, just as I was drawn to 
the mighty Nirvana Symphony by Toshiro Mayuzumi. 

I mention the Mayuzumi work since it and the Ifukube pieces are both related, not 
only in subject matter but also the manner in which the music is designed not so 
much as a portrayal of the life of Buddha, but of the emotional response that results 
when one is confronted with the spiritual journey to enlightenment and becomes 
aware of the implications inherent in the biography of Prince Siddartha Gotama 
who rebelled against his privileged status as a wealthy member of the aristocracy 
and devoted his life to education, the alleviation of suffering and the propagation of 
religious enlightenment once he became spiritually awakened. 

However, where the music of Nirvana is profound and messianic, as if any 
representation of such subject matter is a sine qua non, this ode is intimate and 
refined. In fact, if Mayuzumi is the Japanese equivalent of Olivier Messiaen then, in 
style and idiom, Ifukube has (in this work) much in common with another 
Frenchman, Gabriel Faure. At no time does he shout at you or preach sermons. 
The music never makes grandiose claims. There are three movements; the first - 
Siddartha In Kapilavastu - is scored for orchestra alone while for the second - 
Meditation At Bodh Gaya - and third - Ode: Acintiya Buddha - a mixed choir is 
added. 

Although the performances are unfortunately taken from a live radio broadcast, the 
sound quality is clear and crisp yet not cold and there is hardly any intrusion of 
audience noise. The string tone is full but never sentimental while the woodwind 
are given just the correct balance of ascorbic bite and plangent body. The brass 
section are disciplined and thankfully bereft of that abrasive quality one normally 
expects of Japanese orchestras although one may have liked the balance to favour 
the choir more than is actually the case. 

The copious sleeve notes are in French although there is an English translation 
which is abysmal and is in any case merely a much edited precis. Again the Tokyo 
Symphony Orchestra are the performers, this time under the baton of Kazuhiki 
Komatsu, together with the Tokyo Oratorio Kyokai who prove themselves 
adequate but only occasionally inspired singers. 

LABEL: LES DISQUES DU SOLEIL ET L'ACIER (FRANCE) (LITERALLY 
'DISCS OF SUN AND STEEL’) CATALOGUE NO.: PSA 54024 

DISTRIBUTION: SEMANTIC 

Andy Martin © 2000 Unit Productions 

L+C 1*\ l+\ L*C L/C 2^X 2^» 2^f LsC 1*\ 2* 4T is-C L+C L/C 


79 


The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 

XXXXXXXXXXThe Utter XXX 

FREAKDOM 

Remarkafcly Outlandisli Records 

xxxxxxxxxx 



+ 

A 

NON-PAREIL 

SURVEY 

OF 

ODD 

FISH 

FROM THE 

5 FIVE 5 

CORNERS 

OF THE 

THREE-CORNERED 

HAT 

+ 


’’THE OLD FART WAS NOW BREATHING FREELY 
FROM HIS PERFUME BOTTLE ATOMISER AIR BULB 
INVENTION. HIS EXCITED EYES, FROM WITHIN THE 
DARK INTERIOR, WATERED IN APPRECIATION OF 
THIS THOUGHTFUL PREPARATION...” 


8 






The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


IF I SEE YOU FLOATING DOWN THE 
GUTTER I’LL BUY YOU A BOTTLE OF 
WINE! 

Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band 

Grow Fins: Rarities 1965-82 

USA, REVENANT 21 0 5 CD SET WITH BOOK (1 999) 


Magic is a peculiar force, isn't it? You never know how it's going to effect 
anyone. The Magic Band certainly didn't know, even though they were 
entrusted with the Magic. I first heard Trout Mask Replica in 1 978, very much a 
latecomer. Thank Heavens I did though, as it was a key document that I keep 
returning to and, looking back, there is little doubt that it affected the way I 
think about things, permanently distorted the tinted spectacles through which I 
perceive life. It happened at Liverpool Art College, and at the time I put it down 
to just one more exciting thing in the air. Yet the fact is The Captain was one of 
my tutors; his advice, relayed through the vinyl medium, has stood me in as 
good stead as any I've received from any human being. (Thanks Dave Pickett, 
wherever you are). Through his blues, jazz and poetry, his stories and ideas, and 
his genuinely weird presence and image, The Captain gave me something I could 
really live by. 

But Trout Mask was an exceptional phenomenon, an unprecedented act of 
genius not quite fully understood by any of its perpetrators at the time of its 
release in 1969. Still less understood, I expect, by that many listeners. Long 
after the event we finally get this slab of CDs handed down to us, like 
hieroglyphics from an ancient civilisation. There are far more mediocre talents 
who have been given far more extensive luxury box set treatment so far. Maybe 
it's not always a good thing to get that treatment. I always said that once the 
Sunday Supplements know about it, it's a bad sign. 

Well, this isn't a bad collection and if you're a Beefheart freak you'll have 
bought it already. Some of the material here has been available before on 
bootlegs, but here's an official release for it, along with better sound quality, a 
nice booklet (with excellent knowledgeable sections by veteran Beefheart 
collectors and experts, and a history by John French), video segments, and great 
unseen sleeve photos from the Trout Mask session. 

The guitar and drum parts to Trout Mask Replica are laid bare by Disc Three 

on this collection, presented in an astonishing 70-plus minute 

sequence. This was collated from the so-called 'rehearsal' 
tapes, which far from being rehearsals in fact show a very late 
stage in the development of the entire lengthy and painful 
process that engendered the record. You realise by now that 
the whole story of Trout Mask is becoming better known by 
the minute, and it's being examined by experts as closely as 
The Zapruder film. Yet, as we gleefully examine the forensic 
evidence, I can hear the Captain himself admonishing us; he 
hated having to re-learn his songs for stage performance, 
comparing it to reaching into the toilet and drinking 
regurgitated vomit. Remarking on talents lesser than his own, 
he famously stated 'it's not worth getting into the bullshit to 
find out what the bull ate'. 

Disc Three certainly works as a companion set of tracks to 
Trout Mask, a blueprint to be consulted alongside the real 
thing perhaps. There is, as Ed Baxter said to me, 'a 
tremendous amount of information' contained in these songs. 

If you got ears, you gotta listen. But we can't hear it all, no 
matter how often we listen. I suppose that removing the 
vocals, and hearing these skeleton versions, could be said to 
help the process. But then without the vocals we don't have 
anything like the whole story of that incredible double LP! 

Leaving aside the astonishing qualities of the man's voice, 
textures and growling effects stolen from Howling Wolf, and 
his Ayler-like untutored approach to blowing his sax notes on 
'Hair Pie', what about his unique interior landscape as revealed 
though his poetry, stories, puns, word-play, startling images 
and indelible dada-phrases? Where are the amazing characters 
and images that run through Trout Mask, as rich as any 
created by American novelists like Melville or Hawthorne? 

Where is the heart-rending plea for humanity embodied in 
'Dachau Blues', with the war image of 'three little children 
with doves on their shoulders?' Where is the Old Fart at Play? 

Big Joan setting up with her hands too small? The hysterical 
announcer, modelled on the Hindenburg disaster, screaming 
out his desperation at the fall of The Blimp? The hallucinating 
Octa-fish on the ocean's bed, enduring his Neon Meate 
Dream? The Hemingway-esque hobo looking at the moon, like 
a dandelion? The bird clawing the evening like a hammer? I 
could go on...l might ask, where is the Captain on this record? 


A guest player in his own vision, when he should have the 
starring role. The survivors are starting to rewrite history, in 
their favour. David Thomas, he of Pere Ubu, has asked the 
above question and made a very telling set of observations on 
this already, and rightly too. 'Culture happens in secret', says 
Thomas. 'It is conceived within a brotherhood, Masonic and 
eternally closed to the uninitiated. Civilians are awed by cold 
ashes and dead embers. They rarely experience sparks of fire, 
and can misinterpret even those rare occasions when the 
curtains of the known world do get pulled back'. 

Disc Three, as already mentioned, is no more than a 
reference work which comes in handy for a better 
understanding of the Trout Mask vocabulary. But you 
wouldn't want to read the dictionary for pleasure when 
you've got Moby-Dick lying unread on your shelves. 

Disc Five is a rag-bag of old boots and live performances. 
Desperate for hoovering up any scrap, it even includes the 
Captain's fragments of 'Black Snake Moan' from some 
interminable radio show. That said, the two cuts from 1971 
are pretty ace, and I enjoy his mellotron and keyboard solos - 
even if a more unkind soul has compared these to Rick 
Wakeman. Disc Four you might as well throw in the bin. It's 
got a bunch of crappy videos which you can only play on a PC 
- nobody I know has managed to make the fucking thing work 
anyhow. The audio part of it is some Trout Mask ambient 
chatter which would have been best left in the dumpster. 

Which leaves Discs One and Two. And you realise if they'd 
only had a career as a weird R'n'B band, the Magic Band 
would still have been something very special indeed. The first 
Disc is a total winner actually, comprising home demos of 
songs from the A&M period, before and around the time of 
the first LP, and live versions of same from 1 966 and 1 967. 
'Diddy Wah Diddy' was a favourite with disc jockeys who 
played it to death, and The Magic Band came close to scoring 
a national hit had it not been for an East Coast band who 
released their version at the same time. Disc Two, though 
not quite as resplendent, still has some necessary material 



www.elsieandjack.com 



aube | brume | damian catera | coeurl | crawl unit | disco operating services | 
drekka | electroscope | tlutter | tm synthesis | fuxa | goat | hood | jeph jerman j 
kid-606 | brian lavelle | mlehst | monera | kazuyuki k null | pan sonic | pregnant 
pause | rapoon | remote viewer | seafoam | September plateau j shifts | 
sirconical | trey [mr. bungle] spruance | steward | subarachnoid space | tabata j 
totemplow | v/vm | vir | walking timebombs | wheaton research / brent gutzeit j 
tatsuya yoshida eajad010d0300 


81 



The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


from the Mirror Man and Strictly Personal periods, and contains an excellent 
version of one of my all-time favourite Magic Band numbers, that 
psycho-droneout hymn to dropping acid called 'Kandy Korn 1 . If you dig this 
period you'd be well advised to check out the recently remastered versions on 
CD of the official releases, Mirror Man and Safe As Milk ; which both sound 
frankly magnificent. 

From Grow Fins , we do learn a little more of The Captain's thoroughly erratic 
method. He was fond of writing lyrics down as they occurred to him, 
assembling diffuse scraps of paper, keeping these fragments in a bag and then 
pasting them together under the correct headings when time allowed. Or 
rather, compelling John French to do it for him, and treating him like a lackey to 
boot. One of the three accapella songs on Trout Mask, The Dust Blows 
Forward N the Dust Blows Back', was taped 'live' pretty much as the lines of 
song popped into his head. He pressed the pause button on the tape player, 
drew a breath, and waited for the next moment of inspiration to descend. You 
can hear all these gaps plain as day on the record. The same erraticness applied 
to his whole songwriting method, of which again we can hear evidence on Disc 
Five. A tune might start as a whistle from his lips, only to be transcribed by one 
of the musicians (in this case by Eric Drew Feldman), and finally, through 
constant practice, rendered into a coherent piece of playable music - which 
was not only playable, but repeatable. And all from the caprice of one mad 
genius. I think what's becoming clear now is that his visions and inspirations 
came to him in fits and starts; there was never a clear way ahead for him, a 
shining moment of clarity when the project would become obvious. And he 
always refused to entertain the obvious, the banal, the cliche - above all his own 
cliches, which can't have made the process any smoother. I have an image of 
ideas forcing themselves out of his head like lumps of granite along a digestive 
tract, popping out with great difficulty. 

Most notoriously, this erraticness transferred to the method of tutelage 
involved in teaching The Magic Band to play in this new way. Stubborn and lazy, 
The Captain could not - or would not - explain in any but the most elusive and 
offhand way how the band were to proceed with making this music practical. 
'Musicians have always recognised that drummer John French is the unsung 
hero,' says David Thomas, 'and the contributions of The Magic Band 
undervalued.' Yes, The Captain was spectacularly lucky to have John French, 
who knew how to transcribe music notation, but also was prepared to put up 
with this man's impatience and truculence. God, it must have been hell for 
them! Indeed, most of the I 1 2 pp booklet of Grow Fins consists of gripes, 
complaints and whinges along the lines of 'we can't do it' from The Magic Band 
survivors. And yet they did do it. And what unearthly documents survive? 

Clearly Don Van Vliet didn't know exactly how to express what he had to 
express, but his vision was absolute. Wrestling with his inspiration like a lump 
of clay, yet unable to mould it into the shapes that he wanted, he became 
determined to overcome all obstacles. He knew he had to make it happen 
somehow, at the expense of everything - a musical career for starters, because 
he did indeed have a shot at one. As for the misery he caused The Magic Band 
with his bullying and manipulative tactics - well, the cost of alienating a bunch of 
acid-head freaks seems a small price to pay for such musical greatness. 

Anyway, just listen to me - I didn't even want to go down this route, and I 
would prefer to avoid any further prolonging of this sterile debate. John French 
was very talented, exceptionally gifted drummer and well-fitted to be the 
arranger and transcriber of The Captain's work. But he was not a genius. He 
didn't originate any of this powerful work, and neither did the other players in 
The Magic Band - as excellent as they were. Take away the Captain and you 
might have a bunch of reasonably good guitar-playing freaks. The Captain not 
only spotted their potential, he harnessed it. While his players could only write 
down the music or the words, and play it back to him, The Captain was the one 
actually doing it. He was the one who could utter a line like 'A squid eating 
dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous'. And the rest of us mere 
mortals spend our lives getting our heads around it! 

Got me? 

ED PINSENT 


DRAG RACING RECORD CUMS DOWN 
ITS OWN LEG 


Santa Pod 

ASH INTERNATIONAL RIP ASH 4.9 CD (1999) 

'A lot is good, but too much is just enough ' (Old Hot-Rodders saying) 

This CD is made up of 25 edited excerpts of live recordings made by Paul 
Williams on 29 and 3 1 May and 3 July at Santa Pod raceway in England. And I've 
got to ask the obvious question: why? Williams claims that he was bored with 
the current ways of experiencing sound. The answer wasn't going to be more 
clubs and more gigs. It was going to be something different. It had to be Santa 
Pod - where 2-car drag races are held along quarter or eighth of a mile 
distances. Williams was clearly impressed by his first experience of Santa Pod - 


the roar of the engines, the screech of the tyres - and felt 
compelled to produce this document. But, in trying to 
encapsulate the experience of Santa Pod he's overlooked how 
important the other senses are to the full appreciation of 
what happens there. Without the sun glare, the blue skies, 
the garish paint jobs, the stench of burnt rubber, the taste of 
the heat and the engine oil and the hot dog stand - without 
that, all you've got is the commentator's voice over the 
tannoy interspersed with sudden engine roars and rumbles. 
Occasionally there's crowd cheers and applause. But that's it. 
It's left wide open to the interpretations of the listener - 
hopefully inspired by the sleevenotes which suggest that this 
CD documents everything from 'A day at Santa Pod' to 
'Technical recordings of specialised technologies'. It's lots of 
things but clearly comes loaded with notions of its own 
unique relevance, leaving the unimpressed listener compelled 
to dismiss all the arguments in its favour and see it for what it 
is (even admitted to in the press release) - raw material for 
DJs to 'frighten the daylights out of the dancefloor'. So, yes, it 
will be sampled by talents mediocre and inept and, like the 
whale song albums of the 70s, will quickly become an overly 
familiar gimmick - an aural lava lamp, basically. 

As a fan of Motorhead and Merzbow I was strapped in and 
ready to GO with this CD. All its cover blurb promise of 
'Raw Power' and 'Monster! Monster!' and the complimentary 
set of ear plugs suggested a new level of self-inflicted sonic 
violence but instead of Maximum Penetration it cums down 
its own leg. It would have been much more interesting to give 
the source tapes to Masami Akita or Alec Empire so they 
could create something that really does live up to the 
expectations raised here. 

'Too much is always better than not enough' - JR. 'Bob' 

Dobbs 

RIK RAWLING 29/11/1999 

Ash International, 13 Osward Rd, London SWI7 7SS 


LONDON KILLS ME 

Various Artists 

Variations 3: A London Compilation 

PARADIGM DISCS PD10 CD (1999) 

Essential. The third and final in a series of compilations 
assembled by Clive Graham which for the sake of conceptual 
unity only feature musicians based in London Town and 
environs. A champion of free and experimental music, 
Graham's soapbox stance is partly fuelled by dismay at the 
lack of recognition (and money!) given to London musicians 
who are - in his view - currently producing some of the most 
challenging and exciting music to be found. The compiler has 
been backing up this claim regularly with these Variations 
compilations, but for my money this selection of his 'personal 
favourites' is the best one yet. It reveals a nightmarish and 
twisted take on Dark London, which in year 2000 is clearly 
becoming Post-Dickensian in its bleakness - a town lacking in 
focus, flounced up with cosmetic window-dressing like the 
Greenwich Dome and the Wheel, fripperies which serve only 
to conceal the social ills and injustices, the foundering 
economy, the lack of basic decent humanity everywhere, and 
the retrograde culture that assumes all men to be loud, 
beer-drinking, lecherous, football-loving louts. The I MAX 
cinema in Waterloo for example displaced hundreds of 
homeless people living under wooden pallet shelters from the 
'bullring' near St Johns Waterloo Road, replacing that 
makeshift community with a soulless entertainment-plex 
dedicated to showing Fantasia 2000. 

Actually, it's only my own sense of personal alienation I carry 
around with me in the city, and so I find solace and comfort 
in the pockets of weird and distinctive voices embodied and 
estamped on these recordings, reassuring me I'm not alone in 
perceiving that the world is sinfully askew! Variations 3 
showcases great gobbets of blasting electronic noise alongside 
some extremely developed examples of the strange and 
savage beauty of the human voice's capabilities. In an age 
devoted to mono-culture idiocy, this insistence on 
peculiarness and singularity is precisely what we need. Three 


82 


The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 



We finish with a 

\ J. from the ultra-rare Hastings 

V I • ||w of Malawi LP from 1 980. 

V> | suspect be something of a 

■j weirder-than-thou collector 

when it comes to curating 

V ' old vinyl treasures. This 

Y .* ; Ipl particular scoop is no 

% exception, but it is a real 
' V 11111 scoop! In this brief extract 
* we hear a distorted old 
1 Children's LP (from before 

V Incredibly Strange Records 

followed by an extract from 

statements on the futility of 
existence go, it’s a classic - 
and will leave you feeling 
about as bleakly abandoned 
as it's possible to feel. The 
original record Vibrant 

stapler obscures characteristic growth featured John Grieves, 
Herman Pathak and Dave Hodges - all early associates of 
Nurse With Wound. Of the 300 copies of their LP which 
survived, most were only sold mail order through the United 
Dairies network - allegedly, as a 'comedy' record. Safe to say 
we'll never see a copy. The original sleeve art (reproduced 
here in the luscious arty booklet) looks utterly cracked. 


electronic pieces by Syngen Brown open the ^ ^ 7 

CD, and they kick ass - this guy is the king of - Jfifl 

the ring modulator and reverb units! jmBBfW. 

'Ruckhousing'. Rainer's Corpse' and 'Midland -f ' 

Educational' are all thorough investigations -Jr Jr! 

of the environmental recordings he works W MS j m jj 

with, and the powerful noises that result are Jr f Ira*, 

lean, disciplined and assert themselves like JJ / 

blocks of stainless steel. As good as any f' ± . 

contemporary work in the field - yet these 

are Brown's first ever releases. . j ' 

The track by WITS is four women ' 

performing live at the Lewisham Arthouse 

(another small London-based pocket of . - \ i 

cultural resistance clinging on by the skin of A ' * JsL . 

its teeth), and features the first of our £t, 

idiosyncratic human voices, this one 

emanating from the estimable Viv hDe 1 W- 

Corringham. This live cut is a triumph of 

unskilled playing, recalling not only the glory MB 

days of The Slits (just check out the picture 

of one of the women wearing a lampshade). 

This Heat, but also of Company Week 
before it became too goshdarned polite and 
staid. This track reeks of invigorating 
risk-taking, with its ethereal wailing, twisted 
synth sounds and rattling of junk percussion. 

Voltage exhibit the same determination to sound as distinctive as possible. Our 
second 'voice of weirdness' comes from one Sharon Gal, who impersonates a 
madwoman trying to control an hysterical outburst. She's supported by a 
guitarist and percussion on this melancholy track, and Voltage demonstrate that 
real improvising is about finding your own voice and your own sound, not 
about having to impersonate established greats like Evan Parker. This cut comes 
live from The Klinker, a well-kept secret venue at a pub in London where the 
spirit of anarchy and freedom prevails - though I suspect that not every evening 
there produces music as good as this! 

Phil Durrant, Clive Graham and Aguiles Pantaleao all turn in electronic-based 
music and it's all highly individual and greatly recommended. 


ED PINSENT 

From paradigm@scalk.nec 


Durrant's 'Depths' is a lethal assassin of a track, another 


robustly butt-kicking noise which comes roaring in with no 
apologies, then stays there spitting out its nasty throbbing 
rhythmical bursts which reflect his liking for the sort of 
dangerous Pitch-Black Techno music which reputedly lurks in 
the underground clubs of South London in the earliest hours. 
Like much of the compilation, Durrant's piece really puts your 


elsieandjack.com 

wilfully contradict expectation J 


back to the wall - insisting that there's something vital at stake. 
Crucial. Graham starts with pieces of found magnetic tape and 
presumably works in the good old-fashioned IRCAM way to 
generate a frankly terrifying slab of white noise, vast echoing 
caverns, and doomy clangs. Loud and portentous, his 'Time 
spool' is powerful enough to vibrate the listener back in time. 
Aguiles P kind of stands out in the comp as he's as close as can 
be to a 'professional' - a Brazilian composer, graduate student 
of electro-acoustic music and winner of a prize with this 
'Three inconspicuous settings' recording. Also it's the most 
subtle piece of music here, making him a contemplative ascetic 
in a compilation full of roarers, weirdies and wildmen. His 
extended abstract whirrings are full of shimmering changes in 
pitch and timbre, with occasional sound-windows onto field 
recordings, leaking in seamlessly. 

Andrew King the folksinger, and Bob Cobbing the sound poet, 
are the third and fourth of our idiosyncratic human voices. 
King takes a break from his preoccupation with English folk, 
and turns to America this time - turning in his version of a 
19th century Episcopalian hymn. 'Ninety and Nine', based on 
the singing of Frank Proffitt, is a stirring religious song and 
contains a gloss on the parable of The Lost Sheep. King's 
vocalising (normally acapella) is here leavened by his 
harmonium playing. Bob Cobbing is a 'senior member’ of the 
poetry and sound poetry scene, greatly cherished by many 
Londoners who have each discovered him in their own time. 

In this live recording, which includes the 1964 poem 'Alphabet 
of Fishes', he comes across like a scary mad uncle of the 
avant-garde, ejaculating his Dada-like chants and nonsense 
syllables with a bearish growl. The brief 'insults' piece - a 
compilation of 'quaint' old English words which should never 
have disappeared from currency - nearly completes our 
Dickensian tour of London. 


now: 

« eajOOIc » various artists » elsieandjackandchair 

brume | crawl unit | flutter | fm synthesis I fuxa | mlehst | monera | 
pregnant pause | rapoon | shifts | tabata | totemplow | tatsuya yoshida 
« eaj002 » shifts » pangaea 
« eaj003 » tabata » brainsville 

« eaj004 » subarachnoid space/walking timebombs » the sleeping sickness 
« eaj005 » September plateau » occasional light 
« eaj006 » aube » pages Irom the book 

next: 

« eaj007 » fm synthesis » how to destroy the reputation of the 
« eaj008 » brume » zona ventilte greatest secret agent 

« eaj009c » various artists » rewriting the book 

brume | coeurl | disco operating services | drekka | electroscope | hood 
| fm synthesis | kid606 | brian lavelle | monera I pan sonic | remote 
viewer | sirconical | trey [mr. bungle] spruance | steward | v/vm | vir | 
wheaton research / brent gutzeit | etcetc. 

« eajOl 2 » monera as a group are distinguished from all other organisms 

largely by negative features 



83 



The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


KRAUTROCK LEGEND REVEALED AS 
FAT UK HIPPIE 

The Nazgul 

Habitually c/w Plujectories 

DAY RELEASE RECORDS 12" VINYL DR103 (1999) 

A cherished illusion or two bites the dust with this issue. You may recall The 
Nazgul's sole release - and associated records from the mysterious Pyramid 
label - being reissued by Gary Ramon's Psi-Fi label in recent years, under the 
Krautrock banner. There was a mini-brouhaha as Krautrock devotees claimed 
these unheard obscurities were modern 'fakes'. Turns out that Toby Robinson 
(and not Tony, as I have mistakenly printed in previous issues of SP) is still alive 
and well, and a thriving Hippy record producer. The Nazgul was him and his 
assistants, working under aliases - and as an Englishman abroad in Cologne, he 
produced all of the Pyramid releases. They now emerge as Krautrock-manque 
records - ie they happened to be have been produced in Germany in the 1970s. 

I suppose if the same music had been issued in England, say on the Harvest or 
Neon labels, it might not have had quite the same cachet, 

No matter - the music still resounds mightily. Persuaded to resurrect The 
NazgQI alias for one last dying burst, Toby Robinson and crew returned in 1999 
for this single vinyl release, and a short (very short!) live final performance at 
the Water Rats in Grays Inn Road London, on the 6th September. That live 
show will stick in my memory, mainly for its visual bravado - one of the players 
dressed in a white boiler suit, with headphones over his face, and manipulating a 
makeshift trumpet (paper cone over a length of metal pipe) along with bits of 
scrap metal and a stepladder. Those were fifteen minutes of awesome and 
terrifying noise. Robinson, of course, appeared as though he couldn't care less - 
seems he had been dragged away from working on the latest Gong LP in the 
studio for one night, to blast out the sort of nonsense he could probably do in 
his sleep. An admirable attitude. 

This isn't a bad little record either, although without that sense of portentous 
doom that I have come to associate with The Nazgul's LP. Two sides of 
reasonable atmospheric chattering drones, created using 'an accordion, a 20 
foot drainpipe, human voice and 270 metres of microphone cable as their sole 
instrumental sources'. It’s housed in a totally inappropriate designer sleeve and 
I'm not sure if it plays at 45 or 33. The latter speed however makes it last 
longer, fit for savouring a cherished illusion. 

ED PINSENT 


corresponding to each sound. These turned up on covers, 
and in his visual art. One, if I remember correctly, was 
entitled 'ree', and looked a bit like a fish. Another was 
probably something that happened accidentally on a 
photocopier. Perhaps it was all meaningless, but, added to the 
bewildering and sometimes beautiful music, it lent factor X 
tapes a compelling quality entirely absent from many other 
cassette releases of the day. There was something going on 
with factor X that seemed more substantial than the usual 
bloke with a Throbbing Gristle album who goes out and buys 
a synth and a tape deck, and at times you'd begin to suspect 
that Nurse With Wound were actually just another pub rock 
band. 

So where does that leave us with regards to this CD! The 
majority of the playing time seems to be taken up with 
silence. Tiny little nuggets of dry sound blip up at 
unpredictable intervals. Burp. Squeak. Twang. Foon. Squeak. 
Silence. BuBuBuBuBuBu. Squeak. 

GNGNGNGNGNGNGNG. Someone tunes a radio. Silence. 
Honk. Foon again. And so and so forth. A truly accurate 
review would probably have to be written in the form of one 
of Marinetti's Words-ln-Freedom pieces, which is the closest 
I can come to describing what's going on here. I can't even 
say that it's good or bad, or whether I dislike it or not, 
because it transforms the CD player into something with an 
entirely different function to the usual. Listening to this isn't 
like putting on Shakin' Stevens, or even Faust, and checking it 
out All I can be sure of is that this CD exists, like a big slab of 
matter, like the lunar monolith of 2001: A Space Odyssey 
before we found out what it did. I think stating that this CD 
exists is a good thing. It certainly demonstrates how artless 
the likes of LaBradford and Oval are. I'm confused. 

WAR ARROW 

From Nicolas Genital Grinder, PO Box 75032, 17610 

Kallithea, Athens, GREECE 


TWO GUYS BASH A METAL 
SHIP WITH HAMMERS 


Day Release , 8 Moat Place, Stockwell, London SW9 OTA 


BURP. SQUEAK. TWANG. FOON. 
SQUEAK. SILENCE. BUBUBUBUBUBU. 
SQUEAK. GNGNGNGNGNGNGNG. 

TAC / factor X / E / Runzelstirn and 
Gurgelstock 

Collaboration 

PERVERSE SERIES NO 1 CD (1998) 

Four artists. Three countries. One bizarre piece of shit. What an impenetrable 
mystery is this. The contributors are, so far as I can tell, all woven into a single 
work which takes up the full length of this CD. TAC is Tom Cox, an American. 
E is from London, England. Runzelstirn and Gurgelstock are from Switzerland, 
and should be known to at least some of you. factor X is the only name with 
which I am familiar. 

factor X has been responsible for some of the finest, and most infuriating 
cassettes of the last ten years. His earliest releases included amusing conceptual 
items like a cassette in which the actual ferric oxide tape was an inch-long strip 
stuck on the inside of the plastic cassette shell - so you couldn't actually play it - 
and a tape of which the master copy was found lying in the road, presumably 
chucked out of a car window, reproduced as factor X found music. I say 
'conceptual' but as I understand it, wor lad wasn't actually bothered by such 
concerns. He just did these tapes because it amused him. More 'conventional' 
works ranged from near-unlistenable noise to tape collage, to screwed-up 
wailing folk and even a few killer pop songs. 

Fuelling his creative endeavours was a consistent and continually evolving 
mythology, centred upon the number 1 5, which he deemed to be of some 
highly personal symbolic significance. This preoccupation manifested itself with 
1 5 determinants - tiny fragments of sound: noise, meaningless splinters of a 
spoken phrase, minuscule edits of some forgotten melody. Each determinant 
became more and more familiar with each cassette, like the unreadable aural 
hieroglyphs of an alien language. They meant something to someone 
somewhere, as presumably did the visual determinants of which there was one 


The Sons of God 

The Object 

SWEDEN, FIREWORK EDITIONS RECORDS FER 
1014 CD (1999) 

A fairly singular recording indeed this - concocted by our 
good friends Leif Elggren and Kent Tankred, for whose other 
recent efforts see elsewhere this issue. This piece of sound 
art proceeds from a pretty bizarre premise, and one with 
which I personally have a certain sympathy. It's to do with the 
idea that sounds might somehow be encoded within objects, 
and that there may be a scientific way of extracting them. 
Imagine a potter's wheel, the rotating of the ceramic and the 
inscribed grooves upon it acting like a groove similar to that 
on an LP record. Sounds might be 'recorded' in a primitive 
way upon such a groove. If you could find the right stylus - 
say a very sensitive laser beam - suppose you could unlock 
the sounds of the past! 

A ludicrous concept, right enough - and since I'm clearly not 
the only one to have heard of it I'm surprised it hasn't been 
on The X-Files before now. Having read about it in a science 
magazine, I did a short comic strip on this conceit some ten 
or twelve years ago and mused on the illogical conclusions to 
which it might drive an enquiring mind. I never imagined it 
might result in this - The Object- wherein our two sound 
artists apply this same cracked logic to an actual physical 
entity, and a huge one at that. They've latched onto a fishing 
boat apparently used for military / spying means along the 
Baltic coast during the Cold War; The Sons of God have 
explored this metal ship using highly sensitive microphones to 
'extract locked, frozen or dormant information from the 
complex interior of the object.' 

This immediately summons up the image of two very earnest 
and perhaps rather pretentious men crawling all over an old 
trawler and imagining they're hearing all manner of occult and 
cryptic messages as they bang their mallets against a steel 
bulwark. The Cold War fantasising links them to some rather 


84 



The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


less fanciful explorers in the same area - our own Disinformation, or S.E.T.1. On 
the other hand, if you're expecting something like the ultimate 'Metal Industrial' 
album, you might be disappointed. The Object is no Neubaten-styled clanging 
sheet-metal deconstruction exercise. The record rather sounds like an 
extremely ominous hum from beginning to end, as though someone were 
continuously rubbing against a huge twenty-foot gong with a metal vibrator. 
Hoping for secrets, the listener is kept on a knife-edge of expectation, only to 
realise it's going to be like this for the entire 66 minutes of its duration. Actually 
this is no bad thing, since it starts to sound almost like music when you grow 
used to it If you dared to play it continuously and at a high volume, who knows 
what dark occluded messages you might reveal. 

ED PINSENT 


RAM ON! 

Anima-Sound 

Musik fiir Alle 

ITALY, ALGA MARGHEN PLANA-A 4TES.027 CD (1999) 

Fan-terror-tastic! This record is not only a musical winner, sure to appeal to 
broadminded fans of electronica, 'out' jazz, and wacked-out rural psychedelic 
music - it's also one of those rare items where the music actually lives up to the 
promise of the bizarre story behind it. Which would you like to hear first? The 
story it is, then. In 1971 an egalitarian hippie couple called Paul and Limpe Fuchs 
had been travelling around Germany in a wooden caravan, pulled by a tractor. 
Wherever they stopped, they played their bizarre music in the town square for 
the villagers and townfolk - just like the musicians of Bremen, only this is even 
stranger than legend. Seems they were banging a large bass drum, shaking their 
percussion, and whipping it out on some home-made instruments - which 
creator Paul Fuchs modestly named after himself, including the 'Fuchshorn' and 
the 'Fuchsbass'. Outgoing and generous, I guess they sincerely believed in taking 
their 'art' to everyone who'd listen, but God knows what the audience felt upon 
catching sight of these two freaks, let alone hearing their eerie blasts - most 
sensible petit-bourgeois gentlefolk would probably have rather thrown 
themselves into the gears of their own windmills than endure such musical hell. 

These hairy naturist libertarians eventually wound up in Diisseldorf and parked 
their caravan outside a recording studio owned by Willy 
Neubauer. Instead of immediately calling the polizei, he took 
them in, and, after hosing them down with jets of hot water, 
let them run rampant in his recording studio with their mad 
ideas and their demented instruments. Three days later, Willy 
had added exciting ring-modulator effects to some of the 
ghastly ear-splitting wails of Limpe Fuchs, put a little phase on 
the drums, and these two 17-minute tracks - called 'N DA DA 
UUM DA' and 'TRAKTOR GO GO GO' - were soon 
enshrined in a vinyl release in 1972. Now at last the world is 
ready to fully appreciate the Anima-Sound, and we've the 
groovy Alga Marghen label to thank for providing this reissue - 
along with the priceless 'Dozy Old Ram' cover art, and an 
unbelievable photograph of the Fuchs doing their funky thing 
on the back cover. Yes, the Fuchshorn is there, the very sight 
of which makes a mockery of all you hold dear. If you're a Vic 
and Bob fan and usually collapse into fits of mirth when 
Mulligan and O'Hare play their ethnic instruments, you're 
about to learn that truth is always stranger than satire. Boy, 
do I envy you...get ready for untrammelled and untutored 
excellence in music, atonal wailing voices, insane horn blats 
and free blurts, all propelled by off-the-beat bass drum attacks 
that are simply, well, cretinous would be too polite a word. 

File this screwball next to Erica Pomerance's ESP acid-freak 
classic You Used To Think and Amon Diiul's Collapsing, and 
enjoy. Go Animal! 

ED PINSENT 


jewel cases with an ever-increasing sense of despair, 
wondering just how many unwanted Bernard Butler and Faith 
No More CDs the world can carry before they reach critical 
mass and fall through the Earth's core and suck us all in after 
them - when you spy something.. .unusual. This is, of course, 
assuming you're someone like me who is always looking for 
something, ANYTHING that seems to be infused with a sense 
of potential beyond target 'markets' and lifestyle 
accompaniments. Usually it's a cover image, or a band name 
or even just the font used for the title. It has something, that 
'What the Fuck' quality that forces you to lift it out from the 
racks and inspect it further. You check the price, you check 
out the sleevenotes and wonder if this is worth taking a 
chance on? Is it some forgotten gem that even the hippest, 
most eclectic record collection has yet to find space for? 
Would your money be better spent on a Big Mac Meal or the 
latest FHM? These are the questions you must answer. And 
so it goes, more often than not, you put the thing back and 
move on, never to know what you may have passed up. But 
sometimes the wind is blowing in the right direction, the stars 
are in their correct alignment and the moon is on the wane 
and that's when you do it. You pull out a crumpled fiver 
(because these chance items are rarely steeper than that) and 
you buy a piece of what you hope will be cracked sunshine. 
Back at home you put the disc on and as you fumble the 
creased and sweat-buckled booklet out of the case you get to 
hear the secret you've bought in on. 

In this particular instance my £3.90 got me a cover drawing of 
a manga Godzilla, drooling semen-like globules of lava spittle 
as he clutches a gorily eviscerated Sonic the Hedgehog in his 
clawed fist. With snazzy smeared Kanji graffiti graphics it 
looked like a 14 year-old's art homework that had me 
instantly intrigued. The back cover is a messy collage of 
marker pen, tippex and what looks like blood, boldly warning: 
'Don't Fuck With The Forces Of Nature!’ The inner booklet 
is a comic - scrawled with a hurriedly minimalist approach 
last seen in 'Giant Skull On Wheels' - featuring Wongo Boy. 
He's a skateboarding, cereal troughing Bat Mite clone who 


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85 




The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


gets to shag Catwoman before finding himself on the receiving end of a twatting 
courtesy of a much better hung Godzilla who fries the little shit with a 
FAGOSH! blast of Atomic Breath. Deliberately juvenile and inept it leaves the 
potential listener with a mixed sense of foreboding and idiot glee for what they 
are about to hear from the disc itself. 


listener is left reflecting that as an innocent expression of joy 
for all music, or pop-inspired experiment or even as a 
misguided art prank this is one worth hanging onto and 
exploring further. For me it was worth it for the Wongo Boy 
comic but the added bonus of a disc full of music that 
genuinely sounds to be coming from the heart and the groin 
of the teenager imprisoned in all of us, still hunched over the 
radio, listening without prejudice to the Top 40 countdown in 
a forgotten age before the evil Behemoths of MTV and 
'Alt.Rock' shambled over the horizon to lay waste to the 
cities of our hearts and souls. We need Godzilla, now more 
than ever, to fight and defeat them before they destroy us 
forever. He’s our only hope. 

RIK RAWLING 13/07/1999 


In between blasts of Akira Ifukube's original Godzilla theme you get a tour of 
outer fringes of late 80s pop, walking in the footsteps of nutters like the KLF. 
'Godzilla Vs The Space Mutants' is looped metallic whines, Eddie Van Halen fret 
tickling and preposterous 'Rock Out' inflections stretched over a pit spiked with 
a resolutely 80s drum machine and moans sampled from porno films. 'Monster 
Island' is a 70s cop show 'funk' workout that brings unwanted flashbacks of 
Coogan's Run and the ridiculous Hippie party theme Pigeon Toed Orange Peel. 
It sounds worryingly authentic and comes Registered Delivery without any 
trace of the required 90s irony quotient. 'Mechagodzilla Vs The Sex Kittens 
From The Nth Dimension' has what sounds like Genesis P. Orridge wiffling on 
about 'packages' before he fades out and good riddance because here come 
liquid rhythms that 

predate Autechre by mm 

r ' 

some years, giving a 

faint reminder of the 

keyboard rise from 

Durari Duran’s Tfanet i, 

'When I bend over you 
again, SHOVE your 

cock into my asshole'. ■ if . 

They stop dancing, look Rif . fijR* % 

at each other bemused ; < 'v ■ _ jjpFv 

and then shrug their - jjir jl ™ 

shoulders before jfc. , • 

resuming the sweating Lr'** -• !t 

^'rugging. ' ISM 

more porno moans, 
biscuit tin drums and a 

Steve |ones riff . "■ : .. — - 

restated ever ,r>d o,e, 

thit^onlfgOTsesfar ^ 

choir of Harlem Angels , . 

Du Du Du Du Dududu QBj 

du over another 

Autechre-esque 

workout that floats 

further down the ' fc.M' 

gospel river the longer A" , *"*n| 

it goes on. And it goes smsmSM MBmi ■ 

on for a while. * ! - 

In less than 40 minutes 
it's all over and the 


The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


THE -THE- IRE- IRE- IRE 

CURATOR'S 

.DEN. 

O RECORDS ARE OUR,. 
CHEESE MUFFINS ® 

The Scepticism of Desirability 


Melanie C 

Northern Star 

VIRGIN RECORDS CDVX2893 7243 8 48525 2 8 CD (1999) 

Just to get the tetchy disclaimer over with. In purchasing this CD I had 
to get a bus to and from my nearest mainstream record shop, W H 
Smiths in the lovely pink Elephant and Castle shopping centre. It being 
W H Smiths - and aren't those adverts with Nicholas Lyndhurst 
marvellous - I paid a significantly higher price than I would have done 
had I shopped around. The whole operation took over two hours. 
Therefore this is not reviewed as part of some elaborate gag, or 
because, hey isn't it just so crazy reviewing Melanie C alongside Dez 
Bailey and Merzbow?! Right, that's you lot told. 


a few years later U2 doing the same thing 
on a budget about 1 ,000 times greater. U2 
still stand out as the better act. Irrespective 
of budget, their multimedia thing showed 
that there was at least some thought and 
wit going on, whereas Front Line Assembly 
just bombarded us with meaningless 
shocking images purporting to make some 
comment on whatever the fuck they were 
purporting to make some comment on. 
Similarly, Northern States finer tracks do 
what the generally hipper Garbage might 
do, had they elected to get around to 
writing a second song, instead of just doing 
'Stupid Girl' over and over with different 
titles. Even with a radio-friendly production, 
Mel C still does the fuzzed drums and 
broken guitar screaming thing better than 
any turdy XFM hopeful I've heard in a long 
time. 

I've got to admit I'm surprised by how 
strong her singing is. She's got a substantial 
pair of bellows driving out some of the rock 
belters. This is probably what saves some of 
the lyrics. They might have that 
embarrassing earnest intensity of being sixteen and spotty, but with the 
voice and the musical setting, she pulls it off more often than not, 
leaving one with the realisation that yer archetypal teen poet usually 
feels that stuff with a passion that could power a space station for a 
year, no matter how badly it's written. Besides, teenagers have a right 
to be intense. If you can't be intense when you're discovering bodily 
hair, when can you? Sneering from behind your Desmond Morris really 
isn't on, or fair. 

Well, I'm not sixteen with spots, but if I were I'm sure I'd love this to 
death. I'm over 30 with spare tyres, and it still sounds good. It isn't an 
unreservedly fantastic CD, but it has some fantastic songs. 

WAR ARROW 


Squeaky big-eyed Spice does a solo album. The first track I 
heard from this initially fooled me into thinking it was Hole, 
except I couldn't quite place the vaguely familiar voice once I'd 
realised it couldn't be Courtney Love. Then the record ended 
and the irritating DJ informed me it was a song called 'Ga Ga' 
by Melanie C. 'Snakes alive!' I exclaimed. 'Oh crikey!' I 
expectorated, amongst other Bunterisms. I couldn't get 'Ga Ga' 
out of my head for a month, which is good going as I'd only 
heard it once. 

Despite a smashing pair of albums, marred only by a few fillers, 
I've learned not to expect too much from solo Spice things. At 
best it's Mel B failing to quite connect with an otherwise fine 
Timbaland or Missy production. And at worst it's 
you-know-who reading out the menu of a Mexican restaurant 
over a Bontempi Latin rhythm. So, after her vocalising for 
Bryan Adams, I greeted the news of Sporty's impending rock 
megalith with a little scepticism. As it turns out, it stands up 
pretty good. 

There's a couple of fairly nondescript numbers, as I suppose 
you might expect, but on the other hand Northern Star has a 
lot going for it. The lyrics at times verge on yer sixth form 
poetry, but there’s nothing that embarrasses with the severity 
of an Oasis chorus. Some of the pseudo-ballads fail to blow the 
top of your head off, but all things considered her voice and 
the crisp production prevent any disasters of the kind that 
even the normally mighty Brandy or TLC sometimes 
perpetrate. Speaking of whom, TLC's Left Eye turns up on 
'Never Be The Same Again', one of the numbers leaning more 
towards R&B. It's great to hear Left Eye rapping again. R om 
the last two TLC albums you wouldn't suspect that it's the 
reason she first got into this crazy world of showbiz. 

Northern Star spans quite a range of genres (R&B, techno-lite, 
digital grunge, piano knees-up, slowies, fasties) without 
sounding like a compilation. While the unremarkable numbers 
aren't so bad as to cause offence, the good stuff more than 
justifies my trip to that ludicrous pink shopping mall. Six 
months on and 'Ga Ga' hasn't yet outstayed its welcome. It's 
funny how sometimes these allegedly fake megastars manage to 
go one better than the lesser-known integrity jockeys. I saw 
Front Line Assembly play live in front of a bank of TV sets, and 



87 



The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


Fly Pan Am 

Fly Pan Am 

CANADA, CONSTELLATION 
CST008 CD (1999) 

'Acid Rock’, 'Big Beat', 'Skunk 
Rock', 'Dad Rock'...it's always 
amusing to see a desperately 
befuddled music press scrabbling 
for a catch-all name to any new 
musical movement, as if without 
such simplistic definitions they 
would soon run out of ways to 
praise or dismiss the material 
they're hearing. So when bands 
such as Slint, Labradford and 
Mogwai first reared their ugly 
heads with their own particular 
variations on the quiet/loud 
dynamics initially popularised by 
'grunge' (there we go again) it 
was obvious that hack reviewers 
and opinionators for a living 
were going to have to dig deep 
to find anything that could 
possibly serve their purposes - 
not forgetting that it had to be 
short and snappy enough to fit 
onto a strip of Dymo tape on 
record shop racks. So what were 
the key elements here? 

Controlled dynamics, found 
sound instead of lyrics, almost 
narcoleptic progressions, Glenn 
Branca blastwaves of guitar and 
banshee howls of feedback mixed 
with Bernhard Gunter-esque 
vacuums of minimalism and, in 
most cases, no sense of humour 
whatsoever. Well they took all 
that on board, scratched their 
heads and, no doubt, partook of 
some 'shit' for inspiration, and 
came up with 'Post Rock'. Well 
done. 

Unfortunately the name stuck and is now a universally recognised term 
for any music that isn't Techno or wouldn't necessarily be featured on 
777 Friday. But for all its inherent complexities it's a popular form with 
some labels specialising in it, particularly Constellation, cornin' atcha 
straight outta Montreal with a short roster consisting of 'bands' and 
'projects' with all the superficial glitz and shine of a stealth bomber, 
amongst them the critically acclaimed Godspeed You Black Emperor! 
and their various offshoots - 'Exhaust' and now 'Fly Pan Am'. 

Behind the now regulation silk-screened cardboard sleeve (featuring 
some of the laziest and inept design work I've ever seen) is 60+ 
minutes of that which The Wire loves most. It's all about the power of 
repetition and the filling of spaces. It's what you hear out of the corner 
of your eye. It’s the urban panorama compressed into digital sound - 
the restrained and introspective alternative to Merzbow's Door Open 
at 8AM. Subway trains, street traffic rumble, tyres hissing on wet 
streets. Garbage trucks, fire escapes, grease-bloated pigeons in stunted 
skeletal trees. Empty buildings, lift shafts, neon blurs. Images stirred by 
a thousand reportage flashes. The five tracks, all bearing defiantly 
French titles, blur into one another except for track 3 which is 17+ 
minutes, 10 of which is nothing more than the same note strummed 
over and over while static fizzes and drums tumble in the background. 
It’s an endurance test - the sonic equivalent of Chinese Water Torture 
- and the only point on the album where the atmosphere is lost and 
you begin to suspect those involved are taking the piss. 

Elsewhere it could easily be Godspeed You Black Emperor! without 
the lift and soar of the strings. But if, as some maintain, Godspeed You 
Black Emperor! are nothing more than your fave rock riffs bolstered 
by 'samples’ of the more solemn classics (such as Barber's Adagio for 
Strings) then where does that leave Fly Pan Am. Open to easy 
dismissal for some perhaps, but they'd be missing the point. This is 
music that utilises the background noise of everyday life to create a 
sense of time and place for anyone living in 20th century cities. You'll 
certainly never hear a lift motor or a distant street jackhammer in 


quite the same way again, as this 
record suggests that there are 
unseen phantoms at work, 
recording our daily trivia for 
some signs of a clue as to what 
we really are and why we do 
what we do. New juxtapositions 
of sudden edits and fade-ins seem 
to confirm that those involved 
know their shit and, in avoiding 
the pitfalls that so many hopefuls 
in this genre stumble into, have 
established new directions for 
the more adept pupils to follow. 

Fly Pan Am are sure to appeal to 
those already inclined in this 
direction. They'll never inspire 
the same passion and hyperbole 
reserved for GYBE! or Mogwai 
but this is so far removed from 
the pale and bloodless efforts of 
others that it may as well be 
from another galaxy. But it is so 
very much from our world, 
those involved knowing full well 
that the answers don't lie in the 
gods or the stars. It's only us, 
what we do and where we 
choose to go. We are alone. 
There is nothing else. 

RIK RAWLING 07/12/1999 

Constellation, PO Box 42002, 
Montreal, Quebec, Canada 
H2W2T3 
Constell@total. net 
www. total. net/~conste/l 

Do Make Say 
Think 

Do Make Say Think 

CANADA, CONSTELLATION 
CST005 CD (1998) 

Toronto based DMST appeared on the critical horizon around the 
same time as Godspeed You Black Emperor! and quickly drew 
favourable comparisons. Part of this was a general desperation on the 
behalf of music journalists searching frantically for a new location to 
champion after Seattle, Bristol and Manchester had fallen out of favour 
but I feel that the significant factor in this is the recognition of the 
potency of the whole creative scene that has developed on the eastern 
Canadian border, a scene that embraces everything from Cronenberg 
to the seminal Semiotext(e) 17: Canadas collection. DMST also share 
the Constellation label with GYBE! but they are very much ploughing 
their own furrow, one driven by a perhaps more 'jovial' spirit and 
certainly by a wider range of influences - everything from punk, metal, 
jazz, dub, Pink Floyd, Can, Suicide, Low, Palace Brothers, 'hard jungle 
trance' and even 'eclectic art rock' - producing a sound that they 
themselves describe as 'Introspective Acid Rock on Valium'. 

The band's name comes from a visit to a school classroom where the 
words Do, Make, Say and Think were printed on giant posters on all 4 
walls. The notion of these children being subliminally force fed these 
commands seemed 'odd' to say the least, and the perfect name for a 
band that plays 10 minute instrumentals. 

And so to the music itself the atmosphere is urban and expansive at 
the same time. Post-industrial hinterlands give way to rolling flat plains 
under moonlit night skies. Passing cars hiss by on roads slick with 
recent rain. Ry Cooder riffs echo back on themselves as unexpected 
saxophone moans pass like night traffic. Bass draws the scene back to 
the side streets and the alleyways of downtown. Jazz cliches are 
sprayed over with graffiti scrawl and 'the old' is nothing but a canvas to 
work on - a million miles away from Sting's dubious appropriations and 
posturing. 

The bass is the heartbeat, alive, throbbing with sensation. No drugs 
required, this is a pure adrenaline rush. The taxi passes a club where 
the doors are flung open to cool down the folks inside and the funk 
and sweat spills out onto the sidewalk. Merzbow Ecobondage rumbles 



88 


The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


and fizzes give way to a road movie score and Kevin Shields toying 
with a wah-wah pedal before it all crashes into the wall of a bar where 
inside the DJ has unleashed The Stooges Funhouse on the unsuspecting 
crowd. 

DMST get it all out of their systems and move on to the final track, the 
one where it all comes together. 'The Fare To Get There' is nearly 20 
minutes long but by far the simplest in structure - perhaps the blissed 
out distant cousin to 'Mogwai Fear Satan'. Flute, drones and guitar 
brush against one another, settle into the groove and never outstay 
their welcome. 

The packaging itself is a perfect compliment to the music. I've been less 
than impressed by some of Constellation's 'here's one I made earlier' 
efforts in the past but here they come up trumps with a simple 
cardboard sleeve and insert cards offering six different possibilities of 
cover image - all vague and indistinct but very much 'art'. 

Wide open to possibilities and interpretation - which is the key 
element at the heart of DMST. You get the feeling they've only just 
started and long may they continue. 

RIK RAWLING 01/02/2000 

Constellation, PO Box 42002, Montreal, Canada H2W 2T3 

constell@totai net 

www.cst.com 

Doug Snyder and Bob Thompson 

The Rules Of Play 

DEAD EARNEST PER NCD 44 CD (1999) 

Daily Dance was the obscure cult LP made by these American players 
when they were younger, released as a private press LP in tiny 
quantities in 1972. When Brian Doherty reissued it on his Warm 
O'Brisk label in 1 998, many critics and listeners (ourselves no 
exception - see issue 5) were knocked into a cocked hat by the 
shimmering magnificence of it, and rejoiced to learn that here was yet 
another underground obscurity discovered, and what's more it even 
turned out to be worth discovering. It remains a stone classic of guitar 
and drum music, each player facing each other in a macho standoff and 
a duel to the death, playing as though the fete of millions 
depended on their every electrifying note. 

The Rules Of Play is the rematch. The guys behind that 70s 
classic are indeed still active, and perhaps like Simeon Coxe of 
Silver Apples keen to supply further product to hungry young 
fens who have rediscovered their work. The duo put out 
Robots in 1991, which I've never heard; this one, released on 
Andy Garibaldi's Dead Earnest label which is home to many a 
spacerock and psych-stoner obscurity, comprises three live 
tracks recorded in concert or studio, with Snyder playing the 
Midi guitar or keyboards against Thompson's drums. It's 
pleasant enough, but in a blindfold test three out of four 
hep-cats completely failed to connect this spacey, melodic, 
meandering rock with the punky, abrasive energy of that 1 972 
LP. For a good 75% of the time, this music could be any Brand 
X Space-Rock combo from Seattle or Des Moines. Hell, most 
of the time Snyder is just playing dumb arpeggios which any 1 2 
year-old with a Woolworths electric guitar gives up after the 
first few days. In fact, I'll go so far as to say it's generally dull 
and self-indulgent - not even Steve Howe, the guitarist out of 
Yes, would have dared try to palm off this sort of flabby 
flim-flam on his audience, not even in the mid 1970s when the 
most pompous outrages in the name of ego-tripping overlong 
LP releases were a common crime among major label stars. 

Snyder and Thompson need to check out a good Popol Vuh 
LP like Bnsjager and Siebenjager if they want to learn some 
lessons about how to deliver real wrought-iron power from 
melodic guitar and drums. 

Next time an undiscovered classic LP comes my way, maybe 
I'll learn to keep my big mouth shut - doing otherwise only 
seems to encourage them to come back for more... 

ED PINSENT 

PO Box 6921, Dundee DD4 8YN 
andygee@dial.pipex. com 


Immense 

Evil Ones and Zeros 

FATCAT RECORDS FATCD006 CD (1999) 

The ones and zeros of the title are the binary digits which are all that 
computers can understand. The title may therefore bespeak some 
kind of scepticism about the desirability of making music electronically. 
Whatever, this is a fine album of guitar-bass-and-drums rock music, its 
eleven instrumental pieces fizzing with inventive ideas and sparkling 
musicianship. 

Most of the tracks are mid-paced. Typically, a relaxed bass line is 
bolstered by busy, intricate percussion and confident electric or 
acoustic guitar. 'Don't You Know How To Use Flippers?' (Immense 
have a winning way with titles; how about 'Neil Young In Sportswear’?) 
adds smoky saxophone to the mix, while 'Antro-Lateral Approach' 
features insistent, quietly ominous piano. But the other tracks don't 
suffer from the absence of such enhancements, so varied and striking 
are the guitar sounds employed. 

Occasional snatches of voices taken from the radio attest to the 
intelligence at work. The opening 'Football Chant' has blasts of 
hard-hitting rock guitar broken up by a voice describing the use of 
antidepressants. On the impressive 'Really Optimistic', advocates of 
conservation are gradually overtaken by vigorous drumming and some 
fairly spectacular lead guitar. 

The strengths of the album are its diversity and conciseness. None of 
the tracks outstay their welcome; they are sharp, focused and 
structured; they make a strong impression, then retreat. 'Really 
Optimistic' is followed by a melodic interlude of delicate acoustic 
picking and strumming, then by the excellent 'Spontaneous 
Combustion', wherein guitar, bass and drums build to a powerful 
crescendo. At the end, the heavy and urgent 'E Flat Sonic Boom' melts 
into the closing 'Valley Of The Mummies', in which serene piano and 
organ curl around sinuous percussion before ebbing sadly away. 

RICHARD REES JONES 



artists that may be 


involved: 


the autumns with 
Simon raymonde | 
jessica bailiff with 
jesse edwards | warn 
defever | drekka | 
electroscope | 
flashpap'r | brent 
gutzeit | ida | in gowan 
ring | In | monera | 
monroe mustang | 
Patrick phelan | the 
pilot ships | archer 
prewitt | the scarlets | 
south | ray speedway | 
spies hecker | 
spokane | swearing at 
motorists | ben vida 



89 



The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


Papa M 

Live From A Shark Cage 

DOMINO RECORDINGS WIGCD71 CD (1999) 

Not for Gatecrasher fans, that's for sure. Dave Pajo continues to plow 
the same furrow he started with Slint. And before Papa M there was 
Aerial M who received much critical kudos but had little to justify the 
praise lavished upon them (apart from the unique spectacle of a horny 
chick on bass when they toured in '981). Now, in his latest incarnation, 
Pajo is down to business as (un)usual, pushing against the rigid confines 
of what the 'post rock' massive will allow. 

Confusion abounds initially thanks to the packaging - cover image of 
boy and girl ice skating, regulation blurred typewriter text, booklet 
that looks like a Dulux colour chart - and the title with its suggestions 
of menace and imminent danger. Well, in the landscape detailed by 
Pajo's decidedly pastoral inclinations the only possible hint of menace 
could come from the hillbillies who live in a shack in the woods, swig 
rotgut moonshine and torture the local wildlife for kicks since the TV 
done got busted. It's not quite Deliverance but the potential for 
sudden idiot violence is always there, lurking in the trees. 'Pink Holler' 
is Fahey's America reviewed from a dewy-eyed end of the Century 
perspective. 'Plastic Energy Man' sounds like something from Jim 
O'Rourke's Fahey 'homage' Bad Timing - perhaps a track dropped for 
being too restrained. 'Drunken Spree' is EM tuning up to play The 
Doors 'The End'. 'Ups' is Sun City Girls to a tee - a short nonsense 
track of Lees Damson piano and squeaky floorboards recorded on a 
microphone held in a bucket of water - whereas 'Crowd of One' is, i 
hope, an ironic comment on the 'post rock' cliche of using telephone 
answering machine tapes instead of vocals and lyrics. Maybe the 
eclectic range of callers - from priests to doctors' receptionists, all 
calling the mysterious 'George' - is meant as the last statement on this 
kind of tomfoolery - and if so then it fails, drawn into the trap of 
unwitting self-parody like a fly to the web. 

Not that any of this makes it a bad album - it's actually very, very fine. 
Pajo plays excellently throughout, never gets too showy, sustains the 
mood and makes many of the pretenders to his throne look like 
raggedy ass jesters. It's the work of a confident and seasoned artist - a 
painter in control of his medium, clearly focused on the desired result 
but not afraid to let 'happy accidents' occur along the way, adding 
unexpected colour and shape to the dynamics of his work. 

The standout track on the album, the 15 
minute 'I Am Not Lonely With Cricket' is 
more O'Rourke-style repetition - a steadily 
flowing brook of notes with the real 'action' 
occurring under the surface, gentle chords 
swaying and echoing in and out of the mix, 
sometimes caught in the light, sometimes 
lost in the deeper shadows. 

Afterwards, banjos wade in on 'Knock Up 
The Casket'. Jarring and unsettling, it's the 
sounds of those hillbillies creating some 
infernal machine in the shack out back. 'Up 
North Kids' is the soundtrack to Stephen 
King's wistful reminiscences of growing up 
in rural Maine and 'Arundel' is the closer, a 
fully fleshed version of the opening track, 
one that's better dressed for bad weather 
as it treads off through the woods heading 
for the high country. 

This is music for the folks - the stoopsitters 
and the churchgoers, the pick-up drivers 
and the logcutters. It's honest enough to 
acknowledge the advances of technology 
and the roar of the city but, at its heart, it 
realises that the best tunes are the one you 
can whistle. This is Dave Pajo on top form, 
a mature artist unimpressed with gimmicks 

and looking to forge some truth from what he's seen and what he 
knows. Let's hope he never finds it, the quest being all the more 
rewarding than the prize itself. 

RIK RAWLING 23/12/1999 

Domino Recordings Co, PO Box 4029, London SWiS 2XR 

www. dominorecordco. com 


Matmos 

The West 

USA, DELUXE DLX212 CD (1999) 

Little is known of Matmos but this, their 3rd album, came highly 
recommended. However, expectations immediately jump out of the 
window when this thing kicks off like OMD or, and I'm not kidding, 

Art of Noise at their most wankiest and nonsensical (as if they were 
ever anything but). If anything, it's most reminiscent of the 70s school 
programme theme tunes that came accompanied with kack-arsed 
animation of Meccano pieces and lumps of coloured clay. Or a Boards 
of Canada outtake, perhaps? It is considerably improved by a 50s sci-fi 
keyboard whine but we're still grossly unimpressed. Fortunately this is 
the only real bum track on the album. From Track 2 onwards it really 
gets down to business with Dave Pajo (Slint, Aerial M, Papa M) in full 
Ry Cooder mode, facing single strums of his guitar off against various 
sound effects including sudden bursts and fizzes and the amplified 
flipping of Bible pages. It's reminiscent of some of Zorn's Locus Solus 
nonsense but Pajo's sublime guitar work is infinitely preferable to 
Zorn's insistent skronk bursts. It's nonsense, like surreal graffiti, but it 
sticks in the mind and resonates for a long time afterwards. 

Elsewhere there's more Pajo toying with Jim O'Rourke-style acoustic 
arrangements and remaining as restrained as it's possible to be without 
lapsing into a coma. Steel guitar and Western theme tunes are 
backmasked and bent out of shape. Distant train whistles, tumbleweed 
and cacti silhouetted eerily against a blood red sunset - the images are 
ail too familiar but now have drum & bass updrafts butting up against 
canyon walls of silence with vultures circling lazily overhead. As a 
celebration of the mythical and romanticised 'West' it succeeds 
because it doesn't rely on the tired old cliches. Unafraid to embrace 
contemporary studio techniques Matmos shed new light on old 
pathways and suggest a different interpretation of the facts. Never for 
a second is this record 'in your face'. It moseys on down the trail and 
invites you to follow it, in search of a time and place that we all know 
in our hearts but may not recognise even when we get there. 

RIK RAWLING 13/12/1999 

Deluxe, PO Box 14205, Berkeley, CA 94712 USA 

Contact : Matmos/Vague Terrain, 800 Hampshire St San Francisco 

CA 94H0 USA 

e-mail: mcess@siip.net 




90 




Mephist©- 

BEATI! 


from he of Nocturnal Emissions. Previous works by that band 
which purported to rework popular yoof music of the day 
include Viral Shedding (mutant Hip-Hop perhaps), Songs Of 
Love And Revolution (electro pop) and more recently Binary 
Tribe (rave house, sort of). These have generally been 
successful because instead of just aping something, it's been 
taken to bits and affixed back together again with glue spewing 
out all over and the decals in the wrong places. Of one early 
beaty collection, the press releases said something like 'this is 
what pop music sounded like before THEY got hold of it', THEY 
being the powers that be, and this was a pretty good 
description. Viral Shedding, as well as being pretty funky, was 
raw, aggressive, cantankerous and thoroughly refreshing 


Company Flow 

Little Johnny from the 


because it sounded a million times purer than the Pigbags and Kane Gangs of the day. 
Whatever approach Nigel used worked for the same reason that The Fall sound better 
than The Smiths. 


Hospitul: Breaks and 
Instrumentuls Vol 1 

USA, RAWKUS P2 50101 CD (1999) 

Like it says, this is an excellent collection of 
instrumental breakbeat music from a very 
imaginative and crucial trio of producers based in 
NYC. But you know what? It was the cover 
artwork that really hooked me into this release, 
which I studied with increasing excitement while 
my worthy constituent War Arrow played me his 
copy. The CD insert unfolds into a frieze of blurry 
photographs which tell a strange story, perhaps a 
day in the life of Little Johnny himself. The genius 
who assembled this spread should be making 
movies - these shots just reek of atmosphere, and 
half-convey a disturbing mystery tale in fleeting, 
broken images. Oddly enough, the lead character 
himself is 'posed' by a dummy - with his head in a 
plastic bag, and the ungainly shapes he throws 
suggest not only that Little Johnny might be 
paraplegic, but also correspond to the twisted 
shape of his psyche. There's a dark backstory here 
you see, regarding Johnny's parentage, hinted at 
by the story in the second track and a tiny little 
childish sketch-scrawl that is just visible on the 
CD spine. When you piece it all together you'll be 
in for a pleasant shock. 

Musically, this presents some frankly irresistible 
dance rhythms, a very crisply recorded surface, 
and a real depth of layered sound that could hold 
its head against any record by Massive Attack, and 
it's damn near as funky as any 'electric period’ 
Miles Davis workout. I must have a soft spot for 
the instrumental side of this field, because I gotta 
admit I'd probably pass it by without blinking if 
there were vocal tracks added. Not that this trio 
haven't delivered the goods in that area too - this 
record is to showcase their musical inventiveness, 
and give their dark imaginations a field trip too 
with the Little Johnny scenario. I think at least one 
of them is fairly heavily into intellectual science 
fiction, such as Philip K Dick and other similar 
mind-benders. A terrific listenable and danceable 
collection of work with many a good twist of 
weirdness on every track. 

ED PINSENT 


Transgenic 

Horsey / Bellboy 

ELECTRIC TRANSFUSION E-TRANS 009 7" 


VINYL (1999) 


I vaguely recalled the Earthly Delights catalogue 
claiming of this single 'none dare call it drum and 
bass', which seemed fair enough as I don't think I 
would call it drum and bass. On closer inspection 
I realised it actually says 'none dare call it a side 
project as Mr Ayers demonstrates what happens 
next in drum and bass', which is a different matter 
entirely. Okay, so this is an adjacent endeavour 


This isn't a bad record by any means, but I can't see it working as drum and bass. It seems 
to shuffle along at too slow a speed, and lacks the all-important bottom end that makes for 
such a dramatic contrast between pounding stomach-cramping bass and nasty tinny snares 
going off ten times a second. I can't see it being the future of the genre either. I suppose to 
his credit, he's avoided the temptation to just remake the same record everybody else is 
doing and, worthy though that may be, I can’t see it giving Panacea any sleepless nights. 

However, if you ignore any suggestion of Junglist ambitions, this starts to sound okay. In 
feet if you play it at 33, which is probably not the intended rpm (I threw caution to the 
wind, after all there's nothing to say which speed it's supposed to revolve at) it mutates 
into a sort of primitive robot jazz, perhaps of the kind you'd find the Cybermen enjoying 
during the last days of the planet Mondas before it was destroyed in the classic Doctor 
Who tale The Tenth Planet Four episodes. 1966. Directed by Derek Martinus. Gibber. 
Gibber. Ahem...Yes. Not much doing at 45, unless you feel like waiting ten years in order 
to flog it to a collector at a highly inflated price. But play it at 33 and you might just want 
to hang onto it. 

WAR ARROW 

Earthly Delights, PO Box 2, Lostwithiel, Cornwall PL22 OYY, UK 



91 




The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


Rob Zombie 

American Made Music To Strip 
By 

USA, GEFFEN RECORDS 4903492 CD 
(1999) 

Here be remixes...of tracks from Rob Zombie's 
first solo album Hellbilly Deluxe. 

By 'remix' he means roping in Nine Inch Nails 
deputies and teutonic grimcore merchants 
Rammstein (amongst others) to ditch the bass and 
drums, fuzz out the riffs and add a few beeps and 
bloops behind RZ's trademark phlegm-growl. Rob 
pretends he's a werewolf, the titles are as dumb as 
a pizza crust (Porno Holocaust mix, lisa She Wolf 
of Hollywood mix, Girl on a Motorcycle Mix) and 
it all quickly collapses into an indistinct mush of 
digital flatulence that sounds exactly like Depeche 
Mode molested by Guns N Roses in the bedroom 
of a 1 4 year-old kid from Iowa. The key 
ingredients are: Universal Studios, Creepy, Ed 
Wood, Hanna-Barbera, Russ Meyer and Freddy 
Krueger. It's stunted adolescence with a record 
contract, a flair for marketing and a keen sense of 
timing. RZ clearly believes in his horror movie 
wank fantasy neverland - populated by green 
skinned porno bitches and tattooists cartoon flash 
made flesh. Dripping eyeballs leer and skulls grin 
while the man himself prowls a stage full of 
burning crosses, surrounded by his Viking 
ghouifriends and artfully caked in grave slime and 
getting away with it because They Do Not Doubt 
what they are doing - not for a second. Zodiac 
Mindwarp started this ball rolling back in 1986 but 
RZ has fully realised the market potential and now 
stalks the malls of the USA like a Texas Chainsaw 
Ronald McDonald. 

But who the fuck is buying it? Even your typical 
'techno goth' with their Matrix wardrobe and 
'dangerous' websites bookmarked are going to 
think this is bollocks. And it is. It's absolute 
bollocks. It's one of the stupidest records I've ever 
heard, made all the more stupid by the fact that 
RZ just doesn't get it. It makes Billy Idol's 
Neuromancer sound like Einsturzende Neubaten 
but I guess our Rob, pockets spilling out with 
gravedirt and dollar bills will think he's above any 
criticisms. And maybe he's right? 

Never the less, this is bollocks, as opposed to The 
Bollocks. The gulf is wider even than supernature. 

RIK RAWLING 20/12/1999 

Rob Zombie, 8491 Sunset Boulevard #215, 
Hollywood CA 90069 USA 
www. robzombie. com 

Khan 

Passport 

MATADOR OLE 338-2V CD (1999) 

Not, as I'm sure you realise, the Ricardo 
Montalban look-alike who will in a few centuries 
terrorise the crew of the Starship Enterprise on 
more than one occasion, resulting in the sad, but 
short-term, demise of that ship's science officer, 

Mr Spock. No, this is some New York techno 
geezer who has put out more than four million 
records, each one under a different pseudonym. 
Passport collects just a smattering of his many 
endeavours. 

It's reasonably varied, though not so much so as to 
sound like a compilation of unrelated artists. From 
the evidence on display, Khan specialises in that 
brand of techno dance which you're supposed to 
enjoy at home as well as one the dancefloor. It's 
complex and fiddly with little sequences and 


skittery hi-hats scurrying around all over like ants in an unexpectedly opened nest, so I 
suppose you could relate it distantly to Chris And Cosey or Leftfield, a bit. 

The problem with a lot of this 'intelligent techno’ is that it isn't actually that great to bop 
around to, unless you've ingested disco biscuits of a strength sufficient to get you frugging 
to anything from Showaddywaddy to Derek Bailey. I don't know why, but somehow these 
folks always seem to lose sight of the purpose of the music, getting lost down a series of 
technological blind alleys, inadvertently mislaying the vital element of booty-shaking beats. 

It isn't all like that. Despite many square-assed tracks guaranteed at least to keep yours 
truly at the bar, Khan comes through on a few numbers, which tellingly are amongst the 
more simplistic of the set. 'Middle Eastern Cooking', 'Body Dump' (which features Ju lee 
Cruise), Time Square-No Time' and 'Say Anything' seem to work on my stereo and sound 
like some form of rump-shaking activity could occur. Other tracks vary from resolutely 
unmoving, to big beat with feedback style tedium ('Suck Blood') to just plain awful ('We're 
Fuckt In The Head'). 

The press release goes on about how famous Khan is and how jumping the joints are when 
he deems to get behind the decks. Evidently some of you out these think he's a jolly good 
egg. The liner notes boast that 'this compilation ties the noted composer / musician / 
producer's styles and sound together in such a way that his genius is undeniable. To our 
faces, that is.' Personally, I think that although Khan has, on the evidence here, produced 
some fine work, his 'genius' is still pretty deniable, and if the authors of the above 
statement wish to arrange a time and a a place via the editorial address of this magazine, I'll 
be quite happy to reiterate what I've said in person. 

WAR ARROW 


Bowery Electric 

Beat 

BEGGARS BANQUET BBQCD 188 CD (1997) 

Try going a whole night without sleep. Then drink four cups of really strong black coffee 
and sit with your head against a faulty air conditioning unit while your next door neighbour 
plays Wu Tang Clan. This, some would argue, is the closest you'll get to replicating the 
unique Bowery Electric sound. But it's not that simple. 

The past few years have seen 'space' or 'drone' rock bands proliferate like corpses in Fred 
West's cellar and they're all pretty much indistinguishable from one another. Cover photos 
of buildings, stationery catalogue-quality design, art school pretension in the track titles and 
a general air of narcoleptic indifference to such vulgar concepts as 'success'. The collective 
motto is 'Dare to Fail' and often a footnote in the NME\s all they manage. It's easy to be 
dismissive of these acts and easy to overlook, amidst all the fog of self-pastiche and 
Spacemen 3 'tributes', that there are some genuinely interesting bands, quite literally, Out 
There. 

Bowery Electric (Martha Schwendener - bass, keyboards, vocals and Lawrence Chandler - 
guitar, keyboards, programming, vocals) are one of the few alleged 'post rock' acts that's 
willing to acknowledge the street pulse of hip-hop. For many, performers and listeners 
alike, the two styles are mutually divorced of all compatibility but Bowery Electric have 
fashioned something unique with their sonic alchemy. Beats, loops, drones, samples, dense 
walls of echo and feedback all filtered and compressed into a lush soundscape for modern 
urban existence. Rock and hip-hop first collided with the Aerosmith/Run DMC single back 
in 1 986 and we're still reaping the bitter harvest of that union today in the form of 'acts' 
like Limp Bizkit and even Insane fucking Clown Posse. You would have thought that this 
kind of nonsense should have reached its zenith with the 1993 Judgement Night album 
featuring a whole host of traditional rock acts mixin’ it up with hip-hop acts of the day, a 
bold venture that gave us Ice-T & and Slayer together on one track. That should be the 
end of the line, that should be all she wrote. But no, some cavemen need to keep hitting 
themselves over the head with the same stick because it's all they know. 

Fortunately there are wiser mutants who've taken their lead from different sources - like 
MBVs Loveless for example. Bowery Electric take the shuddering monsoon of guitar tones 
that drench that legendary album and spike them with linear insistent beats and a sense of 
the 'now' that reaches from the subway tunnels to the edges of the cosmos. It really is a 
sound that huge, a signal hauled in and caught within the mixing desk where layer upon 
layer of sound is applied like Jackson Pollock at the canvas. The art reference is 
appropriate because BE are concerned that this music is imbued with more than the all too 
fashionable notions of disposable 'product' that many celebrated contemporary musicians 
seem to believe is all that's worth striving for. The attention to structure, the insistence on 
the slow build and endless repeats means that you'll never hear a BE track used as 
background fuzz for some 'Yoof TV announcement. It's simply too much, too dense to 
take in small soundbites. BE stretch their ideas out over 70 minutes and they need every 
available scrap of space on the disc. Vinyl is an inadequate format for them, another aspect 
that roots them very much in the near future. For me, this is the unspecified musical 
backdrop for William Gibson's Virtual Light / Idoru / All Tomorrow's Parties trilogy - 
logical extrapolations on current themes that suggest where we're all going and what we'll 
be like when we get there. 

RIK RAWLING 31/01/2000 

Beggars Banquet, 17-19 Alma Road, London SW/8 /AA 

www. beggars, com 


92 


DISCUS NEW RELEASE 



Martin Archer - Winter pilgrim arriving 


1 . Angel words 

2. The eclipse farm heresies 

3. Beautiful city on the hill 

4. A dream of broken and floating doors 

5. Horn (by Nick Drake) 

6. Death-runes, death-rumours, ruins, rains of death 

7. Chemistry lock (Mike, Elton, Hugh, Robert) 

8. Winter pilgrims arriving 

9. River followers 

10. Harbour town online 

A new Martin Archer CD featuring Benjamin Bartholomew and Tim Cole (guitars), Derek Saw (comet), Simon H. Fell 
(double bass), Charlie Collins (flute, sampling, producer), Gino Robair (percussion), James Archer (amplified objects), Mick 
Beck (bassoon) and Sedayne (crwth) alongside Archer's synthesizers, sopranino saxophone, clarinets, recorders and violin. 

As ever, Archer's music is an engaging mix of electronics, improvising soloists, and computer-collaged structures. Without 
compromise to the astonishing studio based techniques Archer has developed over the last decade, this is his first since 
Homweb days to include notated music to any great degree. Also more rhythmic, more tonal, several tracks more guitar 
driven (either the insane cranked up energy of Bartholomew's post-hardcore thrash, or the abstract acoustic pairing of 
Bartholomew and Cole.) The electronics revolve around core piano and overdriven organ sounds, and there's plenty of space 
for Derek Saw's amazing self-reinvention as a comettist in the finest AACM tradition. A deliberate homage to Archer's 
formative 70s influences with references to Soft Machine, Nick Drake and Faust which dovetail into sounds and structures 
which draw from now and beyond now. You're unlikely to hear any darker melancholia this year, and it's only £5 including 
postage and packing. Yes that's £5 because Discus has taken the brave and radical step of reducing CD prices to a level 
which is in step with their real production cost! You won't see it in the shops because we don't deal with any distributors, 
but you can order with your credit card by mail or direct through the website, so be impulsive and do it NOW. (For details of 
other releases plus full texts of past reviews, see the website). 


DISCUS 

Martin Archer's label for electronic and improvised music 
PO Box 658, Sheffield S10 3YR, England 
www.discus.mcmail.com 


93 




The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 

Man Proposes , 
God Disposes 



Van Dyke Parks 

Interview and feature by Ed Pinsent 

94 


The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


I am personally delighted to have the chance to present 
this interview. If you ever read our second issue you may 
have seen my effusive praise lavished on Song Cycle , the 
extraordinary debut LP of Van Dyke Parks. I was, I think, 
prompted to buy it thanks to Chris Cutler's Recommended 
Records catalogue - throughout the 1980s he always kept 
it in stock as part of his 'Cultural Heritage' series. Like 
others, he drew attention also to the Smiley Smile LP, 
compelled for some reason to apologise for stocking a pop 
record in his catalogue of avant-garde and experimental 
music. 'Cool it until you've heard this completely 
extraodrinary record,' he burbled in print. 

I bought a copy of Song Cycle not from Cutler but from 
Rhythm Records in Camden Town - in the days when they 
still stocked second hand vinyl. Since then it pains me to 
state that I have no trouble at all filling my Van Dyke 
Parks LP collection on vinyl - everything I wanted was 
available second hand, except Tokyo Rose which was 
marked down. These records were roses thrown into the 
dust. Doesn't anybody want these excellent discs? Oh, for 
shame! 

When I took Song Cycle home it nearly made me ill the 
first time I heard it. I was shocked, to say the least. I 
haven't been shocked by a record since perhaps the first 
LP by The Residents. This would be about 1985, when I 
still had a few friends who 1 thought I could count on to 
share my musical tastes. Ha! I had only to mention Van 
Dyke Parks and nobody knew what I was talking about. I 
tried taping it for one friend - he absolutely hated it. Only 
John Bagnall caught on, and I feel sure he’ll be as pleased 
as I am to see this interview. 

In an effort to overcome my shock, I tracked down 
Discover America - only to be disappointed that it was a 
completely different style of record. Bewildered, I 
nevertheless persevered. Jump! was a total delight, as was 
the bootleg tape of it I managed to snag from a stall in 
Portobello market. As the years went by the secret histoiy 
of Van Dyke Parks began to leak out - his name kept 
cropping up as a producer, arranger, composer, sideman 
and other musical roles on all kinds of interesting LPs. I 
think Johnny Black, the journalist, was the person who 
alerted me to this. Parks had a commercial career in pop 
in the 1960s - it shouldn't surprise me, but the records he 
made always struck me as far more deserving of the kind 
of 'auteur' status which is given unthinkingly to the Phil 
Spectors of this world. Plus, everything he did was not 
only immaculately rendered, elegant in an old-fashioned 
way - it was also tinged with a kind of surrealism, 
stamped with his personality. I'm trying not to use the 
word 'idiosyncratic'. I bought records by Randy Newman, 
Harpers Bizarre, Little Feat and Harry Nilsson, in an 
attempt to scratch the itch. Peter Case called in Parks to 
arrange on song, as did T-Bone Burnett. The 1980 Popeye 
film by Robert Altman turned out to have a VDP 
soundtrack (effectively) - and bits and pieces of his other 
film work trickled down to the UK too (appearance in Twin 
Peaks, soundtrack for Gain' South by Jack Nicholson). 
When I tracked down a CD by Tony Trischka, an obscure 
banjo player, I soon figured out I was barely scratching 
the surface. It's called World Turning on Rounder Records, 
and amazingly it also features William Burroughs! Parks 
wrote, sung and played on one track, 'Ladies Of 
Refinement', allegedly whipping up the lyrics (filled with 
his witty wordplay) half an hour before they went into the 
studio. 

Nowadays there's a website or two devoted to VDP. One of 
them lists every single record he ever worked on, which 
kind of defeats the thrill of the chase for me. 

So, imagine what it would mean to someone like me to see 
the man play live? There was the Harry Smith tribute at 
the South Bank in the summer of 1999, but this was a 
taster for the biggie - a solo set at the Queen Elizabeth 
Hall, in which he played effectively the same set as 
appears on a CD called Moonlighting - which I don’t own. 


supported by a bass player and guitarist. The evening 
was, for the star performer, marred only by the lack of a 
sustain pedal on the piano supplied - but for at least one 
delighted audience member was an hour of bliss. In a 
charming stage set with a Victorian fringe lampshade and 
potted plants. Van Dyke attacked the keyboard with the 
gusto of a ragtime pianist. High spot of the evening for me 
was a solo version of 'The All Golden 1 , and 'Danza', which I 
think was by a 19th century American composer 
contemporary of Stephen Foster. The set also included 
favourites from the Orange Crate Art LP, and 'Sailin Shoes' 
as tributes to his friends Brian Wilson and Lowell George. 
What also comes over on stage is the warm rapport Parks 
immediately establishes with his audience, and 
fascinating knowledge he shares. Erudite social histories, 
scholarly musical notes, pithy quotes and stories 
associated with almost every song are condensed into 
short expositions; he even paused near the end to read out 
'The Lure of the Topics', a poem he'd picked up from one 
of his trips to the Caribbean. 

Looking very dapper in a grey jacket, check shirt and bow 
tie. Van Dyke kindly spoke to me for an hour in his 
London hotel near the Embankment on the 17 th 
December 1999. As he talks he freely associates with any 
number of tangential topics, his speech thick with 
recondite references and subtle word-play. He's well 
informed on many subjects outside of music, including 
social history. As we'll see there is no small amount of 
compassion in his work, of social justice - he describes 
himself as 'always a man with a mission' - many of the 
understated themes on his diverse records are oblique 
attempts to give a voice to suppressed, unfairly treated or 
unnoticed peoples, and let them enjoy their place in the 
sun. In the same way, Parks - a devoted family man and 
church-goer - has not chosen an unerringly self-serving 
career path in music. Rather, he has attempted to use his 
position and his influence to help his fellow man wherever 
possible. He has served his music and ideas the best way 
he can, and treated with respect the many musicians he's 
worked with. 'While not everyone embraces all of his 
music,' says Donald Richardson, 'it seems that everyone 
he has personally worked with considers him a man of 
integrity, honesty, and intellect.' 



MUSIC IS NOT NATURAL TO ME 


EP Hearing the records that I've heard, as well as being great music, / 
feel that there's a history lesson, about certain aspects of America, 
being given in some of the texts and music. Is it your idea that the 
listener should go and research or investigate or find out further for 
themselves, if there's an intriguing story! 

VDP I would hope that the records I do have more than simply 
musical merit. The talent that I have been given is noisome little. I 
sweat bullets when I write. Music is not natural to me. Most of my 
friends are far better equipped than I am to do what it is that's 
required to support a family. So music is more than an entertainment 
to me, it's a discipline, and it's a love. But it takes work - a lot of work. 
Still, I hope the records that I do have some other service than simply 
a musical entertainment, That they perhaps will agitate further 
exploration into my own obsessions. 

I've found that some people would like to stop suffering, and write 
their symphony. I'm not such a person. I would probably continue to 
suffer, for having written what it is that I've written. Not proud about 
it, but I take delight in actual working. I have a work ethic, instilled by 
some very fine example in my parents. And I believe in that, the joy of 
work. It's a wonderful experience, I'm lucky to have the honour of 
working in music. And I believe I deserve it, at the age of 56! Almost 
57! 

About once every five years I go out and work on the confessional 
aspects - some people are prolific, and are prodigal, prodigious, and 
prophetic. I am really not. If I didn't have a deadline, I wouldn't come 
alive. I need a deadline, self-imposed or economically imposed, to 


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The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


come up with anything at all. But in the process I believe some 
creative things can happen, and all I need is the commission to get 
myself to that point. 



SONG CYCLE 


Released in 1967, and according to Jonathan Romney 'put 
the slammers on Parks' career as a commercial 
proposition'. Warner Brothers probably wanted a simple 
pop LP and got something quite indescribable, way ahead 
of its time, and very difficult to market. Ever since. Parks 
has maintained an uneasy relationship with his parent 
record company, even in his role as an executive there. It 
doesn't all come down to money, because what's at stake 
is good music: Parks takes the view (and it’s hard to 
dispute) that a big corporate record company has 
something of a responsibility to use its money to promote 
and support good music. That should be its duty to the 
artists, and to the listeners; but instead (as we know) 
everyone is treated as just a way of making money. The 
artists are seen simply as producers of sellable units. We 
the public are seen as consumers who buy those units, 
not as people who actually might appreciate music. 

Despite its relatively short length, Song Cycle is rich and 
condensed. It contains more ideas than you find in most 
double LPs - a dense fabric of music and texts. The 
astonishing sound is as lush as anything Martin Denny or 
Les Baxter ever dreamed of, with heavily echoed string 
sections reminiscent of the way many big-label classical 
records used to be produced in the 1950s. The music is a 
tightly-woven All-American quilt packed full of allusions 
and quotes from music's history, bringing in sources as 
diverse as Appalachian dulcimer music, Beethoven 
symphonies, Scott Joplin ragtime, Steven Foster, Charles 
Ives, and The Andrews Sisters. Besides all the sudden 
dynamics, seeming discordances resulting from two tunes 
being played on top of each other (very Charles Ives) , we 
have the sparing but powerful use of sound effects such 
bird song, train whistles, church bells and rainfall. As a 
listening experience, it's immensely rewarding - but its 
ever-shifting surface can frighten off the casual listener. 

The Song Cycle lyrics demand no less. Comprising obtuse 
puns and labyrinthine wordplay condensed into miniature 
vignettes; each verse in the cycle renders in word as well 
as sound a tableau of American landscape as meticulously 
as any painter of the Hudson school. There are 
sumptuous visions of the 'amber waves of grain', fishing 
villages, churches, Hollywood as a desert, and Laurel 
Canyon Boulevard. Each song 
then proceeds to layer in highly 
perceptive political and social 
observations - some obscure, 
some very contemporary (for 
1967) - generating themes within 
themes. Many of these episodes 
though, far from being fuelled by 
the same identikit political 
dogma typical of much 1960s 
'protest' song (step forward, 

Jefferson Airplane), are far more 
personal. Song Cycle has Parks' 
own personal fears and phobias 
as the starting point; it is, he 
says, a record 'rife with trauma'. 


EP Song Cycle. ../r really is one of my 
favourite records. It made quite an 
impression on me when i heard it. 
You've said somewhere else that you 
want to account for every single second 
in your music, that you like the idea of 


music being a crossword puzzle, or a Chinese box, constructing 
something that will stand up to scrutiny. 

VDP Actually, yes - I enjoy work that Is thick with thought. I do enjoy 
that kind of design. Especially in miniaturists, which I consider myself 
to be. I work well with things of supreme unimportance, for example 
the song - to me, I treat it as an epic adventure. But I like the idea of 
inviting repeated study, that's something that I've always enjoyed to do. 
And Song Cycle is another case where it seems to me that I’d been 
somewhat distracted by the wars of our time. Song Cycle talked about 
- 1 remember writing a song called The Attic' about discovering my 
father's war chest. The thing in that was where I found the German 
luger he had liberated from a German officer. And the love letters - 
they call them love letters, but they describe the horrors of war. My 
father was in the first medical team, he headed the psychiatric medical 
team that liberated Dachau. A very dedicated man. ..he found a lot of 
people with a lot of problems, following the German atrocities. So - 
Song Cycle was touched by that idea, that I was in a generation that 
had a debt of honour to the generation before, 

I signed a contract in January 1 967 for that album, I was 22 years old. I 
had no idea what I would do, but I thought the most constructive thing 
that I could do would be to study my own origins. And try to reveal 
what my individual experience had taught or revealed to me, or at 
least to study it. And in the process of studying it - even in a 
free-relating fashion, as I did in Song Cycle, close on the heels of my 
obsession for James Joyce, I thought it might work. That I would be 
able to caterwaul my way through some free-relation in a musical 
effort. I experimented in that form with Song Cycle, and I think 
established a pattern of self-biography, which has continued to this day. 

EP You make it sound like therapy, almost. 

VDP Well it is, absolutely. Because I believe music-writing is 
tremendously self-examining, self-analytical, even unwittingly it is. 

EP One hears rumours about Song Cycle. There's a rumour that it 
was an extremely expensive record to make. 

VDP Well, it cost $37,500. And that was after the correction for the 
artwork, which I understand was $6,000. They went ahead and made a 
title for the record - they said You Are Now Entering Van Dyke Parks. 
That's what the art department thought up. It sounded like a bit of 
buggery to me, and I didn't want it! And I said, over my dead body! 

And I was the first person to reject an art department decision in the 
history of the company. [It] proved to be an anomaly for many other 
reasons at the company. None of which gets points at the corporation. 
I'm not too much of a corporate toad. Was the record too expensive? 
No. Was it notably expensive? No. But it did raise their ire, at the 
company, because they did not know how to sell it. Leonard 
Waronker the producer told me to do what I wanted to do, not to be 
worried about fitting into the mould at the time. It was post-Peter, 

Paul and Mary, the company was being carried by Dean Martin at the 
time, who was a real crooner. I was told not to worry about that. I did 
not have to be a crooner! I did not have to make my songs two 
minutes and 15 seconds long, with eight-bar introductions. 

When you listen to a record, you're 
not listening to a person's work, you're 
listening to the residuals of a person's 
work. That's as close as you get. And 
that, I think, is as it should be. As a 
matter of fact, it is incumbent upon the 
communicator to remove any 
undesirable vestiges of hard labour, to 
try to come up with something 
seemingly effortless. That would be 
wonderful for me, someday I may have 
the opportunity to do it! I think if the 
commission's big enough, I could make 
real music out of it! I think Song Cycle 
did what it was supposed to do. It was 
an escape from freedom for me. I am 
at a 180-degree variance with people 
who look at that as something 
excessively self-indulgent. I do not 
agree! I think that the record is rife 
with trauma, trauma from the Kennedy 
assassination, trauma from the civil 
rights obsession I had, and the anti-war 
obsession I had, and the 
anti-materialistic obsession that I had. I 
was true to myself - 1 did what I could 
to be true to myself. 




96 


The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


And 1 was very sorry that they pulled the cheap shot about how much 
the record cost. When in fact - at $37,500 - it didn't cost the record 
company a thing. I've been in the corporation, I've been in a record 
company's machinations, and I know that they don't pay a dime for 
their records. They write them off. The United States government has 
a tax system which is very clement to developing industries, and 
record companies have abused its - what I think is a public obligation 
to come up with music which expresses a variety of healthy pursuits 
and styles. 

And they’re still not selling Song Cycle [after] thirty years. I'm being 
euphemistic. They are selling it very well - it's still in the catalogue. 
Now there's a reason that it's in the catalogue. But when they cut it 
out, as they did Discover America and Clang Of The Yankee Reaper, I 
just chose a few, because I had a handshake with Mo Austen. I had 
done Discover America, for example, with no contract. That one cost 
a hundred thousand. I was in a meeting one day and the head of the 
record company said 'Do we have any paper on this?', and the 
attorney looked up and said 'No we don't.' They had nothing on me! 



PHIL OCHS 


Van Dyke Parks, happy in his role as the 'man behind the 
curtain', has worked with a significant number of excellent 
American songsters in the fields of pop and rock music, as 
arranger and composer alike. A checklist of these provides 
an impressive CV which includes The Byrds, Ry Cooder, 
Tim Buckley and The Beach Boys. Without wanting to 
rattle them all off again, I call attention to my personal 
favourites - the first LP by Randy Newman (REPRISE RS 
6286), which nobody ever buys or even talks about. It 
boasts simple, poignant orchestral arrangements by Parks 
which occasionally replace or supplement the usual piano 
orchestrations that Newman favours. These aren't I 
suppose Newman's most memorable songs ever (his 
satirical canine incisors had not yet pushed aside his 
sentimental milk teeth) , but as a listening experience this 
is simply gorgeous. Newman remained a close friend, and 
gave Parks the 'Vine Street' song for Song Cycle. 

Phil Ochs grew out of the Greenwich Village protest folk 
song movement to become an uncompromising 
spokesman for American radicalism - doing it in a series 
of exceptional records which have been praised by radical 


Ed Sanders. After he’d made a number of acoustic LPs, he 
opted to eschew the singer and acoustic guitar sound to 
go down a lush orchestral arrangement path which ended 
in such bittersweet masterpieces as Pleasures of the 
Harbour for A8sM Records. Before this however he called in 
his friend Parks to work on Tape From California and Phil 
Ochs' Greatest Hits. The former LP, in amidst the more 
outspoken rallying-cries like 'The War Is Over', conceals 
one of Ochs' most personal and moving songs. Called 'Half 
a Century High', it features Parks on the harpsichord and 
a very unusual arrangement - for the first verse Ochs 
sings through a distortion effect that sounds like he's 
making a phone call from the moon, against the sound 
effect of a babbling brook. When the instruments fade in, 
the listener experiences a mini-epiphany that matches 
perfectly the personal revelation that the singer is going 
through, as he has emotional maturity thrust upon him 
by the cruel world, and grows to be 'Half a Century High' 
in spite of his tender years. A tiny masterpiece of poetry 
and record production which I recommend. 


VDP Do you know what a maverick is? A maverick is something 
without a brand. I think it is appropriate to say that I am a maverick. 
Because I'm not branded, any more than Phil [Ochs] was. The 
difference between Phil and me, aside from some real talent, and Phil 
had real talent, is that I am alive to celebrate him. I was called one of 
the producers on Greatest Hits. They called me a producer. I don't 
know what a producer is! I still don't know. But all I know, it was an 
honour to work for Phil Ochs. 

EP i always felt that you were kindred spirits with him. 

VDP Absolutely. On one of those records, he called me a 'Hero of 
the Revolution'. You know that, don't you? I was the only guy in Los 
Angeles to have the Zapruder film. The Zapruder film was a highly 
coveted piece of arcana from the 60s, when John Kennedy was shot. 

It's one piece of photographic evidence that existed. And I had a copy 
of it. It was illegal to own it. The FBI had tapped my phone. It became 
a habit for us - 1 had it copied, so that we could all sit there to observe 
the film. We would look at the film frame by frame, and try to undo 
what was incontrovertible, and try to bring the President back to life. 
And study what it was that had happened to us, and to the dream of 
democratisation and meritocracy that John Kennedy had in mind for 
the United States. I'm a firm believer in meritocracy. That's what 
brought Phil and I together. 

I met Phil in 1964, in Cambridge Massachusetts. In Club 47 I met Phil 
Ochs, right at the end of that folk-mania, before 1 2 by 5 and all the 
electrification that, [along with] The Beatles and so forth, had changed 
the course of the protest singers. So that's when I met Phil, and then 
by the time he came to California, I was already a bottom-feeder, 
elaborating on other peoples' works, and very happy being the man 
behind the curtain. And Phil Ochs used that, I think to no great 
advantage. I personally preferred Phil Ochs' works that were just 
guitar and voice, I loved Phil Ochs' songs. But Phil was an absurdist, 
and 1 think that it was absurd for him to have strings and things in his 
efforts. It was over the top, unnecessary. I didn't think it was necessary 
to gild his lily. I thought he was beautiful by himself. But Phil went 
through a great deal of frustrations after he castigated Bob Dylan for 
going electric at Newport, and Phil lost.. .you see Bob Dylan, he 
wanted to be Phil Ochs, but he wasn’t Phil Ochs. He wasn't in Phil 
Ochs' league. And that killed Phil Ochs, it just killed him. Because - Phil 
found out life is not fair. And as everyone else kind of bought in to the 
dumbing of America, and the comfy chair, and 'America Inc', Phil Ochs 
was one of the last dissenters. It was a rage - he raged. He went out 
alone, and I think terribly distressed about his dashed expectations for 
the country he loved so much. 

EP i think that's the difference between him and Bob Dylan, i feet Bob 
Dylan gave his audience rather easy answers, that made them feei 
comfortable, and Phil Ochs did exactly the opposite. 

VDP Exactly, but that doesn't mean that Bob Dylan is evil. But his 
mercantile [skills]...he’s a savvy guy, he's a merchant. And he had a 
commercial acumen that brought him to a broader listenership, that 
was less challenged by what they came to hear. 

Morality is a big thing here. We have Bill Clinton posing as a liberal, 
and vulgarising the office of the Presidency in such a way. There's just 
no time for sergeants in my book. There's some very important 
questions now, about the impact of globalism. If the question can't be 


97 


The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 



put in usual reportage - Disney owns ABC News in the United States, 
they own the News service. So that of course somehow corrupts the 
reportage of any Disney adventures, whether it's a movie review, or a 
commentary on Euro-Disney, and these questions of globalism are 
deep and unsettling to me. For the abrogation of a national identity to 
a corporate multinational identity is very troublesome to me. 

Recently in Seattle these questions were raised by common people 

who came together - and as they say, politics makes strange bedfellows 

- from anarchists and absurdists, to union members rank and file, 

intelligentsia and so forth. And they all came there to protest the 

economic or ecological sensibility - or advisability of this GAP treaty 

run amok. All I can tell you is - and 

the blood was let on the streets of muppnH 

Seattle - Phil Ochs would have been f j I 

there, and he would have been |u i sjj 

protesting, and he was not 

fashionable, but he had an enquiring 

mind and a discerning heart. And he 

was not corrupted. Which isn't to kv • \y,Sy ; L : ' 

say he didn't share something with all jft 1 ' 

of us; that he was corruptible, of * ; 

course, was always a question, and 

he was tested in that many times. But Bg !%****s§jt 

I had the greatest respect for him as ^ j 

a person. j j-sd 


Roosevelt went down there... but the guy who wrote it must 
have had some ideas about politicians.’ Parks was no 
exception. His arrangement of the song goes one further, 
the mocking laughter of the chorus closing and ending the 
song, the acerbic guitar lines of Lowell George, the 
near-absurdist arrangement, and his own balmy vocal all 
convey the scepticism of a man who has seen the death of 
JFK and LBJ’s handling of Vietnam. Released in 1971, 
this song is eerily prescient of the Watergate chaos that’s 
just around the comer. 

A lot of the Calypso songs on Discover America were 

originally recorded by 

P Trinidadians who travelled to 

New York, just before the war 
years, and were compiled 
onto various Folkways LPs by 
Sam Charters in the 1950s 
and 1960s. Parks knew these 
Folkways records well and 
chose to pay his lasting 
tribute to the music - and 
indeed the musicians, some 
of whom he got to know well 
on his trips to the Caribbean. 
He even secured a deal for 
one of the singers, The 
Mighty Sparrow, and 
arranged a record for him at 
Warner Brothers in the early 
1970s - and soon did the 
same for the Esso Trinidad 

Steel Band. Parks was 

striving to do the decent thing 
8 for the Trinidadians - Donald 

■ \ A Richardson reports: 'Part of 

Jr “ his effort at this time was to 

gain royalty and copyright 

r authority to these musicians 

' who were not compensated or 

protected by ASCAP or BMI.' 

k * Tk For Discover America, Parks 

Hk A. came up with some of the 

\ wildest string arrangements 

Y yet heard - the dynamics 

B j \ simply defy gravity and often 

V ‘ leave the listener bewildered, 

k * Although it has to be said, 

^ 0 , ' yT the original band 

arrangements on the Calypso 
MragnEriB records that inspired him are 

■l just as skewed - in particular, 
listen to the song 'G-Man 

■HHHHKSSSljP Hoover' in its original form by 
Sir Lancelot. There is a 

genuine steel band, and excellent use of the marimba to 
double the melody on 'John Jones' and 'Occapella'. Parks 
brought in Lowell George and Little Feat from the Reprise 
label to add a superb Southern rock backdrop on tracks 
like 'Your Own Comes First'. He translated the lilting 
rhythms of Calypso into a near-classical string 
arrangement for 'The Four Mills Brothers', re-inscribing 
the song's ephemeral qualities into something more 
durable, without sacrificing one iota of the charm. On a 
grander scale, he had already remade 'Out on the Rollin' 
Sea Where Jesus Speak to Me' into a mini- symphonic 
classic. This was based on the singing of the Bahamian 
guitarist Joseph Spence, and it's almost as though the 
inspired Parks had made a pop-song equivalent of an 
illuminated manuscript out of this simple tune. 


DISCOVER 
AMERICA 
THROUGH 
CALYPSO MUSIC 


The Discover America LP was 1 C 

released in 1971. A total j ft 

change from Song Cycle, the m 

first noticeable difference ft 

being in the sound, quite Bp 

unlike the lush orchestrations • ' i 

of Song Cycle, here was a far ■ '). 

more natural recording. The 

LP comprises cover versions of ■ 

Calypso songs, and steelband r 

instrumentals, indigenous Ft 

music of the West Indies - J 

islands which for a long time 

were part of the British ■ 

Empire, until they came under 
American rule. J. D. Elder 

identified the traits of Calypso IIHHHft; ; .Jft 
as including 'the topicality, its UPH 
tendency to satirize upon 
every conceivable subject, its 

allusion and open picong, and its double entendre.' 
Allusion, satire and word-play - how could Parks resist? 
Singers such as The Lion, The Tiger, Atilla The Hun, Lord 
Invader and others would use the form of the song like a 
daily newspaper - setting down their views and opinions 
on 'just about anything they were thinking about’, from 
the abdication of Edward VIII, to a discussion of the 
Louis-Schmeling boxing match. The Lion was especially 
fond of celebrating the talents of his favourite American 
singers from movies and phonograph records, which he 
did in his charming songs 'The Four Mills Brothers' and 
'Bing Crosby'. 

The song 'FDR in Trinidad' was originally a rather ironical 
Calypso comment by Atilla The Hun (Raymond Quevedo) 
on the visit by the President of the United States to 
Trinidad in 1936. 'There’s a twist to it, obviously, in the 
last verse where he talks about making the world a safe 
place for humanity,' says Ry Cooder, who also covered the 
song on his second LP. 'I think that was an optimistic 
time. They were really excited about the fact that 


BP / recently came across this Folkways Calypso record, which has 
some of the same songs which you performed on there, it was quite a 
revelation to me. What an extraordinary thing for you to do, to make 
an LP of Calypso music ? 


98 


The Sound Projector 

VDP Well I had this LP when I was a kid! And I loved it And there 
were different reasons I did these songs, but I just decided to simplify 
my life to some degree by going here first and celebrating these 
people. I went down and met some of these writers in Trinidad. I sent 
them a typewriter but it was stolen at Customs. They needed a 
typewriter at the Calypso Society. The Four Mills Brothers - by the 
time they did my brother's song called 'Cab Driver' there were only 
three of them, but I loved the Mills Brothers. And I just was fascinated 
by the Trinidadians' talents and insight and political commentary in 
song. Same thing that -you find in music that expresses a political point 
of view that escapes the attention of the censorial governmental 
authorities, the authoritarian regimes that repress such things as 
freedom of thought. It happened in Ireland. Good music, lyrics and so 
forth came to underscore the foment of political unrest. Humpty 
Dumpty has even taken a fall in the course of seeming juvenilia of 
political commentary in song. I tried to do it with Jump!, with the Bre'r 
Rabbit material. So there's a commonality here. My love for Calypso - 
for what it does, its rapacious wit, you know. This Folkways LP was a 
beautiful record, I must say. I don't even possess it any more. I went 
further of course, and I met up with Calypsonians. The Mighty 
Sparrow - I did a record for him, and I met Lord Kitchener and 
Calypso Rose. I did one of Calypso Rose's songs for Bonnie Raitt. 

EP You mentioned something about Calypso form in your concert, 
which sounded very interesting. If I've remembered it correctly it was 
connected to [Trinidad] being a British Colony, which absorbed some 
British influence... 

VDP Well I find that generally to be true that 
every place the British have been - all those evil 
British people! - they have taken their idea of 
Parliament, and with the leavening of monarchism - 
which by the way, is offensive to me. I must say 
that I'm happy to be where I am! Because I've been 


SE7ENTH issue 2000 

(with the help of Lennie Niehaus) all his arranging skills 
with a mini-orchestra including strings, harps, banjos, 
mandolin, cymbalom, steel drum and two harmonicas. It's 
an immaculate record, with his brightest-ever production 
sound. 

Despite this glossy show tune surface however, the 
narrative theme to Jump! is something that Busby 
Berkeley probably would never have dreamed of. It's 
based on the Brer Rabbit cycle of stories, first collected 
and set into prose by Joel Chandler Harris, the late 19th 
centuiy American writer. The work is highly prized by 
Mark TWain as an important piece of American folklore. 
Harris gathered oral-tradition tales from negro slaves in 
America, in much the same way as Cecil Sharp or 
Baring-Gould collected folk songs in the United Kingdom. 
But the tales had existed in America for at least 100 years 
before Harris wrote them down. Taken as a collection, 
these stories defy narrative logic in the same playful way 
as a Roadrunner cartoon - Brer Fox (the principal 
adversary) can be killed off as many times as is expedient, 
only to surface alive and scheming in the next tale. 

Parks' interest in these tales was manifold. Firstly, a love 
of books plain and simple. He loved the original 
illustrations by A B Frost so much that he had them 
adorning the cover and inner bag of Jump!. The same 



subjected to the arrogance of inherited wealth 
from other people, because I didn't have enough 
money. I see that at parties here, and that is 
repugnant to me. And it's still a toy, love is treated 
just like a toy here by the aristocracy. And we 
don't have that in the United States. But still when 
you go where the British have been, if you have 
been where the Portuguese have been, or where 
the French have been, look at Haiti, bleeding into 
the sea. Look at the ecological residue of French 
colonialism. Or Vietnam. The French have known 
how to turn coat and run, and leave us with some 
real big problems, whereas the British have left 
with a sense of circumspection, and having made a 
real contribution to a humanistic government, and 
some efflorescence of popular art. As in the case of 
Trinidad. 


SAJk* 

vww* VWWk 

JUMP! AND RACIAL 
IRREPROACH ABILITY 


The LP record Jump!, although completed 
by early 1983, was not released by 
Warners for another year. This was 
another new idea, a fully-fledged concept 
LP quite different from the themes which 
had proceeded it. At first listen this 
appeared to be one of Parks' most 
listenable and approachable projects. The 
set of nine songs - and two instrumentals 
- sounded like show tunes, near-pastiches 
of hits that never existed from an 
imaginary history of Broadway. From the 
curtain-raiser opening track 'Jump!', 
which never fails to get the adrenaline 
racing, through foot-tapping, hummable 
and danceable tunes such as 'Opportunity 
for Two', 'Come Along', 'Many a Mile to Go’ 
and 'Hominy Grove', Parks added his voice 
to a small troupe of singers, including the 
excellent Kathy Dalton, and deployed 


99 


The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


pictures were used 
as blowups for a 
promotional live 
performance of the 
LP in New York. He 
dedicated the Jump! 

LP to his mother who 
taught him how to 
read, and read the 
same stories to his 
own children. This 
literary passion 
recently culminated 
in Parks' own 
adaptations of the 
Brer Rabbit books, 
published by 
Harcourt Brace in 
three parts, with new 
watercolour illos and a page of sheet music by Parks in 
back. 

In these books he was proudest of his decision to remove 
the Uncle Remus storyteller character - quite an 
achievement, when you consider this is about the only 
character most people remember, thanks to Walt Disney's 
1946 movie Song of the South. Parks' view is that Remus 
was merely added (by Harris) as a narrative distancing 
device, to sweeten the deal in 'selling' these stories to the 
readers. In fact, the tales were of great importance to the 
negroes, part of a 'survival mechanism' as Parks sees it. 
Their structural origins lay in Africa, not in America; and 
the way Brer Rabbit always comes out a winner indicates 
their cultural necessity to the survival of a race kept in 
subjugation. 

I suggest that Parks strives to give voice to this subjugated 
race in Jump! - and his mission is to reaffirm the black 
man at the centre of the Brer Rabbit myth. All the songs' 
lyrics (written by Parks, with Martin Fyodr Kibbee and 
Terry Gilkyson) are phonetically rendered in 'darkie' 
speech - this is not a patronising racist slur, but an 
attempt to reclaim the original stories away from Harris 
and put their words back in the mouths of those who 
originally spoke them. This phonetic rendering may have 
been inspired by Walt Kelly’s Pogo Tlcomic strip, of which 
I guess Parks may have been a fan. (Walt Kelly is 
namechecked on the original sleeve to Song Cycle) The 
animal characters, all swamp- dwellers of the Okeefenokee 
in the deep South of America, all had their gorgeous 
southern accents and speech patterns lovingly captured in 
prose (and lettering) by the masterful Kelly. 

In 1984 Parks gave a performance of Jump! at The Bottom 
Line in New York, to promote the release. On a bootleg 
tape which survives, there's evidence of his spoken 
presentation which hints at further idiosyncratic 
interpretations of the texts; before playing 'Invitation to 
Sin' (in which Brer Rabbit is on the point of being seduced 
by Miss Meadows) he describes the scene as only he can: 
'In the opiated ether, with a nude descending a spiral 
staircase, with chandeliers strung with lighting buds and 
opulescence, an idol of agrarian reform beckons the 
modern man'. 

Jump! was intended to have been developed as a stage 
show - a spectacular one, by the sound of it, matched only 
The Residents and their performance of the 'Black Barry' 
segment of Cube-E. The talent was assembled from Parks' 
friends in theatre and television, but fatal tragedy struck 
at the last minute. Out of respect to the families of the 
survivors, Parks chose not to proceed with the project. 


VDP It's good for a record that was done in two days. The reason it 
was done in two days is because of economic hardship. But it was 
done in haste, and haste is the enemy of perfection. And it certainly 
shows in the results of Jump!, the record. Jump! started in 1982, 
maybe. Matter of feet, they kept it on the shelf in ignominy, like they 


did all of my records for a 
year, so they could write it 
off. They treated me as a 
bad debt throughout my 
career. It hurt my feelings, 
yes. Of course it hurt my 
feelings. 

Somebody told me that 
Jump! would make a good 
musical, and it was a fellow 
by the name of Timothy 
Mayor. I met him at 
Harvard - he was a 
director, who had done a 
play by Bertolt Brecht 
called Mother Courage, 
and he wanted it to be 
musicalised - so I did 
musicalise it. It was with 
Linda Hunt and Brian Doyle Murray, a wonderful production from the 
Boston Shakespeare Theatre. And I went there and met Tim Mayor, 
who had a Broadway smash at the time - he had made a musical of 
Gershwin tunes that were not from musicals and put them together in 
his own dramatic souffle. It was called My One And Only - it was with 
Twiggy. And she'd put on enough weight to be able to carry the part, 
and it was a big success. And so Tim Mayor, having got his foot in the 
door at Broadway, in a very constructive way, wanted to write a book 

- that's what they call the script for the musical. Tim was very talented 

- for example, in one song, he got it where the baby rabbit dies and 
the father rabbit - I wanted a big deal with that concept of being 
pre-deceased. Because my own parents had been by, with my brother. 

I wanted to study that in the Brer Rabbit, when I read in one of these 
stories that his children were so hungry that one of them died. You 
may remember in Angela 's Ashes recently - it was common for a little 
Irish boy to wake up, a generation ago, and find one of his siblings dead 
in the same bed. Things like that happen. And I know what hunger is - 
it doesn't show any more, but I've been hungry and I know what it is. 
I'm familiar with it, and I thought I would deal with it. So I did, and in a 
song called 'Many A Mile' - I wrote about this little rabbit dying, and 
Timothy Mayor had the vision - the dramatic resources to bring the 
kid out of the father's arms by the hearth in his ascension, on a cloud 
to the heavens, where a black angel in a golden chariot rides by and 
takes him off the cloud into the sky, as the choir with their robes 
lengthening are raised on pneumatic stanchions. End of Act One, with 
the kid going to heaven. So Michael O'Donoghue, from Saturday Night 
Live, a scatological fella - I thought would be great for the dialogue 
value, because [he's] a very funny man. So Tim and Michael set off to 
make a musical of Jump! and Tim died of cancer, and about six months 
later Michael had an aneurysm and died. And I was not ready to go 
ahead with that musical over their dead bodies. So that's what 
happened to Jump!, I just didn't want to pursue it. But I'll tell you this, 
it's a great story, I do believe that, when I cite Mark Twain as saying it's 
our most important piece of stolen goods. Folklore value. When I go 
somewhere I go to its folklore to find what is in its heart. But I decided 
to do it without the apologetic, avuncular sage, the apologetic negro. I 
took the negro out, because I wanted not to anaesthetise the project. 
That slave negro was not a necessary ingredient, nor was it part of the 
original stories which were brought from Africa with the Golla culture 
in the South - Carolina and the Georgia Islands. 

EP Do you feel you were reclaiming something quite important in 
doing this ? 

VDP Well no. I don't think so. It's too bad. I really misfired on the 
project It didn't jump, it loped, and it loped nowhere. But I still 
approve of the project, but if I were to do it I would start from 
scratch, I would come up with a different currency of music, and a 
different time. I have written down a through-line, that I think is a 
worthy exploitation of these tales. And codifying them as a single 
expositionary adventure. And the challenge has been vast, because 
there is no exposition in the tales of Brer Rabbit. There's no sense of 
starting at point A and ending at point Z. By the time one anecdote is 
finished, and Brer Wolf is killed, Brer Wolf appears in the next story. 
So it's hard to put this quilt-work together into a single fabric. And I 
think that there are many ways that it could be done. I lived for years 
with this book as if it were a bible. Every day reading from it, for the 
pleasure of my young children. 

When I put out the record, a man in St Petersburg Florida, who was 
the head book-reviewer for the St Petersburg Times, he reviewed the 
record, and I went ahead with him, Malcolm Jones, and adapted the 


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100 



The Sound Projector 

first book for Harcourt Brace. I did three books, and that I think 
serviced my defence of this material. You know the word 'bowdler'. 
Bowdlerism, to me, is Aida in the hands of Andrew Lloyd Webber. 
Bowdlerism is 'Schubert's finished symphony' in the hands of Andrew 
Lloyd Webber. Bowdlerism is an offensive thing to me. I've always 
been very wary of censorship in any form. I know how offended I was 
by it, and for good reason. So when I came to parenthood, and wanted 
to return to the tales of Brer Rabbit, and found their unavailability for 
the expediency of political correctness, and the embarrassment of the 
slave in the picture, I was angry that the books were unavailable in the 
public libraries, considering what Twain himself had said, that they 
were the most important piece of American folklore. But then again 
Twain himself was being pulled off the library shelves. So by now I had 
a healthy animus, an anger, driving and fuelling my resolve to comment 
on this gaucherie, because there might be something in it. And what 
was in it was the fact, the realisation, as my relationship to the material 
deepened and my affection for its unknown authorship became more 
intimate, I realised that it was the survival mechanism for blacks in the 
American South. And part of the way to expiate my own 
complications of having been born in Mississippi, it was a very 
refreshing and often painful process of discovery. So right at the time 
that I found that the books were threatened as an available resource 
for childhood experience, I went ahead and defended the idea and got 
interest from a great publisher, and the first book was deemed 'racially 
irreproachable'. And that was a career decision. I can remember how 
much it meant to me to exclude Uncle Remus, who had been made so 
popular by Disney. So I went through a lot to get there. 



WAR IS HELL 


EP I've done a bit of research into Tokyo Rose. It's a very interesting 
story, which / thought was quite extraordinary. Because she was given 
this show trial, because she was broadcasting propaganda during the 
Second World War; that she was something of a victim, because she 
was of American-Japanese heritage. 

VDP Yes, she was a victim of course. Yes, Tokyo Rose was a very 
interesting episode in my life. Because I was living as a bachelor, 
between marriages, with a male heir of General Jonathan Wainwright. 
They called him 'Skinny'. ..Skinny didn’t weigh too much when they 
found him liberated by Douglas MacArthur, our Pacific theatre 
commander. And they found him in the Philippines, after the famous 
death marches. Which basically revealed the Japanese to be of 
stone-age mentality when it came to the humanities. They drove their 
tanks over soldiers who were too tired to walk to their next 
assignment as prisoners of war. [That's] the Japanese, characterised, in 
my view - in a tremendously prejudicial or accurate way, depending on 
the person you might ask. And as the Japanese were coming into 
economic power, what they called the bubble economy, and they 
were buying a lot of the real estate, about 40 per cent of the real 
estate of downtown Los Angeles. As well as Rockefeller Centre in 
New York, which they bought - they bought the Crown jewels! A lot 
of urban American architecture. And I was very concerned by this 
land-grab. Because it just suggested...it brought up my remembrances 
of General MacArthur's friend, Jonathan Wainwright, and his letters to 
his family. Those letters which I read, describing the bestiality of the 
Japanese toward the American prisoners of war. So I tried to exorcise 
my own demons when I did Tokyo Rose, and I tried to make a joke 
out of my real crisis - sense of crisis - [my] foreboding about the new 
Japanese empowerment. And that's what happened in Tokyo Rose, and 
it has been analysed in a most didactic - and some people would say 
dry, academic fashion - by a Dr Philip Hayward of MacQuarrie 
University of Sydney, Australia. He's a musicologist, and he's written a 
book called Widening The Horizon. Widening The Horizon is a book 
which explores - Dr Hayward says (!) - orientialism and exoticism in 
popular music. And I'm right up there with Martin Denny! So it's very 
interesting to come out with a record that really is from the heart, as 
an object of curiosity to an academician. 



FOLK OF THE UK 


In 1999 I went to the Royal Festival Hall to see a massive 
show organised by the American producer and 
entrepreneur, Hal Willner. It was a tribute to Harry Smith, 
the artist, film-maker, scholar and collector who had, 
during his amazing career, also found time to put together 


SE7ENTH issue 2000 

the Anthology of American Folk Music which was released 
as a six-LP set by Folkways in the 1950s. The show at the 
RFH was a tribute to this, and featured a galaxy of 
musicians and singers all paying their homage by 
rendering their versions of songs from the set. Without 
wishing to dwell on the ups and downs of the musical 
merits of the evening - the stage was crowded with the 
sorts of names that give Mojo readers a wet dream - I was 
glad to see Van Dyke Parks on stage here for the first 
time. He was worked with Willner before, most memorably 
on the Lost In The Stars LP where, through his tasty string 
arrangements a couple tracks, he reminded us of Kurt 
Weill's Broadway career. 

A spontaneous decision to accompany Liza Carthy on the 
piano brought forth an unexpected result. Parks in fact is 
keenly aware of the roots of folk music and is proud of the 
'Celtic marrow' in his bones. He sang 'Summer is Icumen 
In' at school, and one of his early singles (also covered by 
Donovan) is a traditional folk song, 'Black is the Colour'. 


VDP I did one arrangement for Eliza Carthy. Being from a folk family, I 
feel very fortunate to have been able to work for her. She's about 
ready to do her first Warner Brothers Ltd album to try to broaden 
her fan-base. Right now she's given no quarter to what her own 
convictions are about the preservation and invigoration of folk music 
and its referential values, with her father Martin Carthy and her 
mother Norma Waterstone. So I did one string arrangement - a string 
quartet, the Mondrian string quartet down in Brighton. And it was 
enough to her satisfaction that she invited me back to work on 
another one, and that's what I'm going to do on Monday at the George 
Martin studio. I'm so excited to be hanging around where Mr Martin is 
- I so respect his work. And to be part of Eliza's convolution from the 
knowledge of the folk idioms that excite the druid marrow in my 
bones. And I have it! She matters to me as a very precious person and 
I hope that I can serve her, better than I serviced Phil Ochs. I hope I've 
learned more. 

EP So it was quite spontaneous that you started playing the piano with 
her on stage. My friend said you became, for a moment, Percy 
Grainger. 

VDP That would be nice, I wish I were in Percy Grainger's league. 

He's a real musician, I'm telling ya - that record in A Nutshell, with 
Simon Rattle, it was one of my favourite records. It is what these 
music reviewers like to call 'indispensable'. It is necessary, it is a 
must-have - for anybody who wants to feel proud he is British, this is 
it. This record is great! And it is a wind orchestra, it's just so subtle, 
and so beautiful. When war was a more civilised adventure, they 
stopped [fighting] for a performance, and I imagine this is before nerve 
gasses became standard operating procedure. But the MO of the 
general schematic [was] they stopped for music, and they played 
music, and they played it with portable instruments. And those were 
usually band instruments. And Percy Grainger was part of that 
process. This is World War One. Because when the Americans came 
back from World War One, the Doughboys, they were singing 'Danny 
Boy' - that's what popularised Grainger. That was his big hit! He 
published 'Danny Boy' as a lyrical arrangement, for piano, and 'Country 
Garden' was not far on its heels. So Grainger had a big commercial 
success. And also his music is astonishing to play, wonderful, because 
he doesn't hide behind language to get his instructions felt - 'As fast as 
possible'. If you look at some of Grainger's piano work, and you see 
what he does when he takes a sweep of the finger to the highest note 
on the piano - it's so much fun to just figure Grainger out! And he's 
got a lot of osseas, writing simpler parts for those who can't keep up 
with his technique, because he was a consummate pianist. His music is 
just superb. So this In A Nutshell - in a nutshell - actually displays Percy 
Grainger at his best. An Australian native who represents all the best 
that there is of Empire, gone from this world, in things. I recommend 
that! And brutal harmonic convolutions! The guy goes through some 
ruggedly acerbic harmonic testiness, and amazing logic. Grainger is in 
the big time. And speaking of just British folk music, and how much it 
means it me, because I'm embarking on a folk record right now, 
myself, to just do it. It's being supported and commissioned by Warner 
Japan. I'm working on some things that come from these shores, to try 
to study my own bloodlines. And this Grainger meant a lot to me, and 
another person that meant a lot to me was this William Chappell. You 
know his story? William Chappell's father made a lot of money - this 
all kind of ties in, it's funny how things come together with age. The 


101 


The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


work of William Chappell was very interesting to me, because William 
Chappell's father was a successful industrialist in England. His son 
William found himself with this large amount of money, and a man of 
position who understood that with privilege comes responsibility. And 
he realised that the Industrial age was wiping out the folk traditions, 
and while it was stiii possible to make some written record of what 
these bards were singing - you know, when people used to stay up for 
days, and listen to a story? - he would follow those harpists from 
village to village, and he would write this stuff down! And not only did 
he do that - in a book called Popular Music Of The Olden Time , with 
its archaic spelling, a two volume book - took us, for example, from 
how much Henry VIII was paying a piper, and what kind of instrument 
- took us through the golden age of the madrigal and so forth, all the 
way to the 19th century. This one man, William Chappell, produced 
these books which, had he not done that, would have left us a lot 
poorer. 



CONCLUSION 


VDP All of these wondrous stories about folk music at its apogee, and 
also at the moment of its sudden decline, because I'm interested in 
decadence. I mean I like to study things that have a terminal nature, 
those things take an urgency of purpose. And I turned to them into my 
work, like I did with Calypso. Always a man with a mission, and 
somehow mission aborted - I don't always feel so powerful in the way 
I dealt with these things, but what's there in the records that I've done 
is a sense of dedication to things that are passing from our view. Or 
field of vision, or sound. 

So this Carthy thing - you know, 'Man Proposes, God Disposes'. You 
never know why you're doing something. And I don’t figure things out, 
I have no concept when I start. I just start to work. In this case, I came 
to England having been offered to come back to the Royal Festival 
Hall, by this man David Sefton. I just didn't think anything of it, I don't 
count my chickens till they hatch. And at the same point Eliza Carthy 
said I could do some arranging for her. And this I hope will have some 
lasting value. And service my real interest in the continuity that the 
Carthy-Waterson clans represent. And for me to have the privilege of 
being involved in that is really a very deep and thrilling moment for 
me, so I found a reason to be here! It's marvellous, isn't it? It's perfect! 
I can't wait to hear it. White-knuckle, all the way. Always is. 



DISCOGRAPHY 

Come To The Sunshine / Farther Along (Hopi 
Indians) single 

MGMT-9982/1 3570 (1966) 

Number Nine / Do What You Wanta single 

MGM 1 301 / MGM K-1 3441 (1 966 ) 

Song Cycle LP 

WARNER BROS 1727 (1968) 

Donovan's Colours (Part 1) / Donovan's Colours 
(Part 2) single 

(Released under the name George Washington Brown) 

[WARNER BROS] (1968) 

The Eagle And Me / Out On The Rolling Sea 
(When Jesus Speak To Me) single 

WARNER BROS 7409 (1969) 

Discover America LP 

WARNER BROS 2589 (1972) 

Occapella / Ode To Tobago single 

WARNER BROS 7609 (1972 ) 

Clang of the Yankee Reaper LP 

WARNER BROS 2878 (1975) 

Jump! LP 

WARNER BROS 923829 1 (1984) 


Tokyo Rose LP 

WARNER BROS 925968 1 (1989) 

Idiosyncratic Path: The Best of Van Dyke Parks 
CD 

DIABLO 807 (1994) 

Orange Crate Art (with Brian Wilson) CD 

WARNER BROS 9 45427-2 (1995) 

BIO 

i 943: Born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi 

1 952: Sent to the American Boychoir School (formerly the Columbus 
Boy Choir) in Princeton, New Jersey. ('I went there, and sang under 
Toscanini. He took my hand and took me for a bow at Carnegie Hall.') 

First studied clarinet ('I was always the first chair clarinettist, so I 
wanted to be a clarinettist for a living, but i wasn't good enough when I 
got to Hollywood. I couldn't double on the instruments, I didn't play 
flute and so forth. I was not big enough for the big pond') 

Spent two years at Public School, and studied piano at Carnegie Inst, 
where he went on to major in music, in Pittsburgh, 

Pennsylvania, 1 960- 1 963. 

'Folk music brought me back and I found my serious interest in music 
when I left the academic environment.' 

1964: first record contract with MGM. 

1 966: Signed with Warner Brothers. 


Of interest: 

VDP's work as an arranger is far too voluminous to list here. 

The Beach Boys 

Parks worked as a lyricist on the unreieasea Smile LP before signing to 
Warner Brothers in 1 966. The Smile story is well documented in 
Look! Listen! Vibrate! Smile! compiled by Domenic Priore. 



Calypso 

The Real Caiypso LP, FOLKWAYS RBF 1 3. 

Esso Trinidad Steei Band, WARNERS WS 1917. 

Joseph Spence, Good Morning Mr Walker LP, ARHOOLiE 1061 

John H Cowley, Carnival, Canboulay and Calypso. CAMBRIDGE 
UNIVERSITY PRESS 1996 

Cowley also did the sleeve notes for two excellent comps on Rounder 
Records: 

Fall of Man: Calypsos on Che Human Condition 1935-1941, ROUNDER 
CD 1 14 i 

Rooseveit in Trinidad: Calypsos of Events, Places and Personalities 
1933-1939, ROUNDER CD I 142. 


102 







The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2 


DISINFORMATION PROUDLY PRESENTS 

The negatives 
of Lightning 



Descriptive prospectus for a Special commemorative 
Jewellery Collection, Issued on the First Day of 
the Third millennium ~ the “Negatives of Lightning” ~ 
a unique Collection of decorative Artefacts made by 
Lightning Strikes and atomic Explosions 

— J.C. Banks, 1 st of January 2000 


103 





The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2 



“The first ‘Disinformation’ track was a simple analogue cassette recording of longwave 

RADIO SIGNALS RADIATED BY LIGHTNING STRIKES DURING A VERY CLOSE ELECTRICAL STORM. 
THESE CLUSTERED SURGES WERE, FROM THE POINT OF THE VIEW OF THE RECORDING EQUIPMENT, 
INFINITELY LOUD AND ARBITRARILY SHORT. ALL THAT WAS REQUIRED WAS TO SUPPRESS 
AN INSTINCT TO PROTECT THE RECEIVER FROM THESE BRUTAL SIGNALS. THE SOUND OF THIS 
TRACK (WAS) DESCRIBED BY ‘VITAL’ MAGAZINE AS ‘LIKE THE END OF A RECORD BEING 
SLOWLY GROUND UP BY A BLUNT SPIKE’. 

Thunder is cross-culturally identified as ‘theophany’ ~ the voice of God, and lightning 

AS AN INSTRUMENT OF DIVINE INTERVENTION. THE ANCIENT ROMANS PROTECTED AND CONSECRATED 
POINTS OF LIGHTNING IMPACT AS ‘PUTEAL’, NOW KNOWN TO ARCH/EOLOG ISTS AND GEOPHYSICISTS 
ALIKE AS THE SOURCE OF FULGURITES ~ SUBTERRANEAN WANDS COMPOSED OF EARTH, SAND, 

AND STONES FUSED INTO GROTESQUELY TWISTED OBSIDIAN WANDS BY THE PASSAGE OF 
LIGHTNING STRIKES INTO AND THROUGH THE EARTH ITSELF. THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL AND SPIRITUAL 
ASPECTS OF THIS CONCEPT CONTRAST WITH THE FEW, EXTRAORDINARY, EXISTING ARTWORKS WHICH 
RELATE DIRECTLY TO ATMOSPHERIC ELECTRICAL PHENOMENA ~ THE PAINTINGS OF JOHN AND 

Jonathan Martin, composer John Tavener’s ‘Theophany’ and sculptor Cornelia Parker’s 
‘Mass: Colder, Darker, Matter’ [1]. For convenience of comparison Tavener’s ‘Theophany’ 

WAS PUBLISHED on CD A FEW MONTHS AFTER THE FIRST DISINFORMATION TRACK [2], CORNELIA 
PARKER’S ‘MASS’ IS A STUNNING SCULPTURE CONSTRUCTED FROM THE CHARRED REMAINS 

of a Texan Baptist church which burned down after being struck by lightning ~ 

FRAGMENTS OF CHARCOAL SUSPENDED ON THIN THREADS, ARRANGED WITH INTIMIDATING 
PRECISION IN FORENSIC RECONSTRUCTION, AS A GHOST-IMAGE OF A MONOLITHIC BLACK CUBE: 
SUSPENDED IN MID-AIR, BLACK AS DEATH, SHIMMERING LIKE JOHN DEE’S OBSIDIAN STARLIGHT 
MIRROR. CO-OPTING THE LANGUAGE INVENTED BY CORNELIA PARKER FOR HER ACOUSTIC 
ARTWORKS ~ THE ‘NEGATIVES OF SOUND’ ~ FULGURITES BECOME THE ‘NEGATIVES OF LIGHTNING’.” 

Extracts from a lecture written for the Fine Arts Society of London Guildhall University, 

DELIVERED ON 22 nd OF OCTOBER 1 998 {SPECIAL THANKS TO GlOVANNA CASSETTA AND CLAIRE FITZPATRICK} 

[1] ALSO WALTER DE MARIA’S SUPERB “THE LIGHTNING FIELD”, 1977 
[2] “THEOPHANY” BY DISINFORMATION ON “A FAULT IN THE NOTHING” ASH 2.6 2CD, 1996 
And “Theophany” by John Tavener on “Eis Thanaton”, Chandos Digital CD, Chan 9440, 1996 


“NEGATIVES OF LIGHTNING” PROSPECTUS PAGE 1 


104 




The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2 



“IT can be productive to look beyond the pejorative associations of the word ‘noise’, 

PARTICULARLY WHEN DEFINED AS COMMUNICATIONS INTERFERENCE, BECAUSE DOING SO EXPOSES 
LISTENERS TO PHENOMENA OF SURPRISING COMPLEXITY AND IMPORTANCE. BENOIT MANDELBROT’S 
OBSERVATION OF ESCHER-LIKE SELF-SIMILARITY IN THE NOISE PEAKS OF FAX INTERFERENCE WAS 
AN IMPORTANT PRECURSOR TO HIS DISCOVERY OF THE MOST COMPLEX OBJECT IN MATHEMATICAL 
HISTORY. LIKEWISE RADIO REALISES UNPRECEDENTED SYN/ESTHETIC OPPORTUNITIES, EXPANDING 
PERCEPTUAL BANDWIDTH, AND OPENING AFFERENT PATHWAYS TO FLOODS OF UNFAMILIAR IMPULSES.. 
The whistlers, tearing, drones, hiss and CRACKLES RADIATED by lightning are IDENTICAL 
TO NOISES BROADCAST DURING THE GENESIS OF LIFE ON EARTH ~ AT THE ELECTRICAL IGNITION 
OF THE PRIMORDIAL SOUP. A STRONG GEOGRAPHICAL CORRELATION EXISTS BETWEEN THE INTENSITY 
OF ATMOSPHERIC INTERFERENCE, AS ILLUSTRATED IN RADIO SCIENTISTS’ TOPOGRAPHICAL NOISE 
CHARTS, AND DIVERSITY OF SPECIES ~ IN THE TROPICS. THE ROLE OF LIGHTNING IN THE FIXATION 
OF ATMOSPHERIC NITROGEN MEANS THAT THE PROVERBIAL HAND OF GOD CAN, EVEN TODAY, 
STILL BE DETECTED AT THE BASE OF ALL LIVING ECOSYSTEMS. 

IN WESTERN CULTURE A NOISE ~ THE ‘BIG BANG’ ~ IS THE ARCHETYPE OF CREATION ITSELF, 
WHILE EXTENSIVE LITERATURE RESEARCH HAS REVEALED THAT IN ARABIC CULTURE EXACTLY 
THE OPPOSITE IS TRUE. JUST AS IN VISUAL LANGUAGE THE SPARK (WHICH IS THE SIMPLEST 
FORM OF RADIO TRANSMITTER) IS THE PRIMARY SYMBOL OF ELECTRICAL ENERGY, 

IN VERBAL LANGUAGE IT IS THE PRIMORDIAL SYMBOL OF CREATIVITY.” 

Extracts from the summary of Disinformation concepts written for Hull Time based Arts’ 

“TOOT” Festival brochure, published in issue 14 of “Mute” magazine 
{SPECIAL THANKS TO GILLIAN DYSON AND MIKE STUBBS} 


“NEGATIVES OF LIGHTNING” PROSPECTUS PAGE 2 


105 





The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2 



“The effects could well be called unprecedented, magnificent, beautiful, stupendous 

AND TERRIFYING. NO MAN-MADE PHENOMENON OF SUCH TREMENDOUS POWER HAD EVER OCCURRED 
BEFORE. THE LIGHTING EFFECTS BEGGARED DESCRIPTION. THE WHOLE COUNTRY WAS LIGHTED 
BY A SEARING LIGHT WITH THE INTENSITY MANY TIMES THAT OF THE MIDDAY SUN. IT WAS GOLDEN, 
PURPLE, VIOLET, GRAY, AND BLUE. IT LIGHTED EVERY PEAK, CREVASSE AND RIDGE OF THE NEARBY 
MOUNTAIN RANGE WITH A CLARITY AND BEAUTY THAT CANNOT BE DESCRIBED BUT MUST BE SEEN TO 
BE IMAGINED. IT WAS THAT BEAUTY THE GREAT POETS DREAM ABOUT BUT DESCRIBE MOST POORLY 
AND INADEQUATELY. THIRTY SECONDS AFTER THE EXPLOSION CAME, FIRST THE AIR BLAST PRESSING 
HARD AGAINST THE PEOPLE AND THINGS, TO BE FOLLOWED ALMOST IMMEDIATELY BY THE STRONG, 
SUSTAINED, AWESOME ROAR WHICH WARNED OF DOOMSDAY AND MADE US FEEL THAT WE PUNY 
THINGS WERE BLASPHEMOUS TO DARE TAMPER WITH THE FORCES HERETOFORE RESERVED TO THE 

Almighty. Words are inadequate tools for the job of acquainting those not present with 

THE PHYSICAL, MENTAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECTS. IT HAD TO BE WITNESSED TO BE REALISED.” 

Brigadier-General Thomas F. Farrell, quoted in a memo to the Secretary of War, 

War department, Washington, by Major General l.r. Groves, 18 th of July 1945 

“Seen from the air, the crater itself seems like a lake of green jade shaped 

LIKE A SPLASHY STAR AND SET IN A SERE DISC OF BURNT VEGETATION HALF A MILE WIDE. 

From close up the ‘lake’ is a glistening incrustation of blue-green glass 2,400 

FEET IN DIAMETER, FORMED WHEN THE MOLTEN SOIL SOLIDIFIED IN THE AIR. THE GLASS 
TAKES STRANGE SHAPES ~ LOPSIDED MARBLES, KNOBBLY SHEETS A QUARTER-INCH THICK, 
BROKEN, THIN-WALLED BUBBLES, GREEN WORM-LIKE FORMS” 

Time magazine, 17 th of September 1945, p. 68 

“And I SAW AS IT WERE A SEA OF GLASS MINGLED WITH FIRE: AND THEM THAT HAD GOTTEN 
THE VICTORY OVER THE BEAST, AND OVER HIS IMAGE, AND OVER HIS MARK, AND OVER THE 
NUMBER OF HIS NAME, STAND ON THE SEA OF GLASS, HAVING THE HARPS OF GOD.” 

REVELATION 15:2 


“Negatives of Lightning” Prospectus page 3 


106 




The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2 



“The invention of nuclear weapons was the ultimate artistic project of the 20th century. 
Nuclear weapons simultaneously represent the zenith of human intellectual creativity 

AND IMAGINATIVE ABSTRACT THOUGHT, AND THE ULTIMATE HISTORICAL EXPRESSION OF THE GHOSTLY, 
MORBID, DESTRUCTIVE ASPECT OF THE SUPPRESSED UNCONSCIOUS MIND. THE UNIMAGINABLE BEAUTY 
AND AWESOME SONIC POWER OF ATMOSPHERIC NUCLEAR EXPLOSIONS ARE MATCHED ONLY BY THE 
APPALLING TRAGEDY OF THEIR HUMAN, ENVIRONMENTAL, AND POLITICAL COSTS. 

Conceiving the ultimate realisation of the mathematical technique bequeathed 
to Western science by the accountant Abu Ja’far Muhammad ibn Musa [Al-Khwarizmi], 

WHOSE ‘ILM AL-JABR WA’ LM U KAB ALAH ’ CONTAINED WITHIN ITS INTRINSIC STRUCTURE THE 
MICROCOSM OF BOTH NEWTON’S 3RD PRINCIPLE AND, THEREAFTER, THE THEORY OF RELATIVITY, 

Einstein offered an algebraic blueprint enabling transmutations beyond the wildest 

FANTASIES OF EVEN THE MOST EXTREME MEDIEVAL ALCHEMISTS ~ BEYOND THE TRANSFORMATION 
OF ONE PERIODIC ELEMENT INTO ANOTHER, TO THE DIRECT TRANSMUTATION OF MATTER INTO 
ENERGY, THROUGH THE MEDIUM OF NUCLEAR WAR. 

The theological ramifications of nuclear weapons were quite obvious from the outset ~ 

NOBODY KNOWS WHO CHRISTENED THE TEST SITE AT ALAMOGORDO, WHITE SANDS, NEW MEXICO 

as ‘Trinity’, but it is hard to imagine a more appropriate name. The thermonuclear 

FLASH IS A SACRILEGIOUS PARODY OF THE ACT OF BIBLICAL CREATION. RATTLING THUNDER 

{King of the Genies} rose up from the desert sands, his potential compressed by 

CENTURIES OF IMPRISONMENT BETWEEN THE PAGES OF ‘THE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS’, AND 
UNLEASHED AL-SAYHATAN WAHIDATAN. HlS PENT-UP FURY INSCRIBED THE REWRITTEN LAWS 
OF NATURE ONTO A LAKE OF JADE-GREEN MOLTEN SAND ~ DECLARING WAR, IN THE LONG TERM, 
NOT SO MUCH ON SPECIFIC POLITICAL TARG ETS, BUT INSTEAD UPON REALITY ITSELF.” 

Text written to accompany Disinformation’s “Theophany” - a sound installation exhibited in the chapel 
of the underground nuclear warfare command centre at troywood, anstruther, 19 th of June 1999. “Theophany” 

IS A recording of the electromagnetic noise impulses which can be radiated by electrical storms and also 

BY NUCLEAR WAR [1] JSPECIAL THANKS TO LESLEY O’HARE, LESLEY WILKINSON AND DREW MULHOLLAND) 

[1] See “Electromagnetic effects” in “Nuclear weapons, principles. 

Effects and survivability” by Charles s. grace, royal military college 
of Science, Shrivenham, UK / brassey’s, 1994, pp. 91-105 


"NEGATIVES OF LIGHTNING” PROSPECTUS PAGE 4 


I 


i 


107 





The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2 



The “Negatives of Lightning” are necklaces, brooches and ear-rings made from 

PARTICLES OF DESERT SAND FUSED BY LIGHTNING STRIKES TO THE GREAT SAND SEA, SOUTH 

Western Egypt (dates unknown), and by the first ever man-made nuclear explosion, 
‘Ground Zero’ at ‘Trinity’, Alamogordo, New Mexico, on the 1 6th of July 1 945. 

In 1 981 , 36 years into the process of radioactive dissipation, the curator of the 
Tularosa Basin Historical Museum wrote [in the “Lapidary Journal”, January 1981, 
PP. 2276-2278] THAT THE RADIOACTIVITY OF ‘TRINITITE’ (OR ‘ATOMSITE’) FRAGMENTS 
HAS REDUCED FROM ITS INITIALLY HIGHLY DANGEROUS STATE TO A LEVEL “NOT MUCH MORE 
THAN AN ILLUMINATED WATCH DIAL” ~ AND A FURTHER 19 YEARS HAVE SINCE ELAPSED. 

However, while it is true that many members of the public routinely expose 

THEMSELVES TO KNOWN CARCINOGENIC RISKS, NONETHELESS READERS MUST CLEARLY 
UNDERSTAND THAT THERE IS NO THRESHOLD BELOW WHICH ANY RADIOACTIVITY CAN BE 
EVER UNDERSTOOD AS BEING ENTIRELY SAFE, AND THEREFORE ALL INSPECTIONS OF 
THE TRINITITE “NEGATIVES” ARE MADE ENTIRELY AT THE INDIVIDUALS OWN RISK. 

Enquiries relating to the “Negatives of Lightning” should be sent to 

NEGATIVESOFLIGHTNlNG@YAHOO.COM, OR TO THE AUTHOR IN PERSON 

{SPECIAL THANKS TO SUSANNA NlEDERMAYR) 





The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


Moments O: 






o 

o 


TUNES & SONGS! 


Peter Hammill 

The Fall of the House of Usher 

FIE 9121 CD (1999) 

Roger Eno and Peter 
Hammill 

The Appointed Hour 

FIE 9120 CD (1999) 

The ever prolific Peter Hammill returns with two 
albums of quite staggering dissimilarity. It's galling 
how little attention he gets, this eccentric fifty 
year-old who has been responsible for over forty 
albums, every one of them a Gordian tangle of 
weighty propositions and speculations. That some of his projects are 
more successful than others is due less to inconsistency than to the 
exacting, far-reaching nature of his enquiry, as these two releases 
demonstrate. The Fall of the House of Usher is an opera (not a 'rock 
opera') based on Edgar Allan Poe's tale of the same name. When 
originally released by Some Bizarre in 1991, after some eighteen 
years' on-and-off work by Hammill and his librettist Chris Judge Smith 
(the co-founders of Van der Graaf Generator), it disappeared without 
trace. When the rights reverted to Hammill he began a process of 
revision, using advances in studio technology and rethinking certain 
key aspects of the piece. He re-recorded his own vocal parts, 
removed all drums and percussion and added lots of electric guitars. 

The result is a revelation. The original version suffered from the 
limitations of the recording techniques available to Hammill at the 
time, and sounded dry and colourless. In contrast, the depth and 
clarity of the new version throw into sharp relief the awesome power 
and terror of this work. The unlikely cast of singers includes, besides 
Hammill, Andy Bell of Erasure, Lene Lovich and Sarah Jane Morris. 
Together they act out a morbidly fascinating tale of love, friendship, 
madness and betrayal. The vocal performances are uniformly 
excellent, particularly that of Hammill himself, who in the role of the 
increasingly demented Usher reaches jaw-dropping heights of 
declamatory fervour. When read 
on the printed page, Smith's 
libretto seems rambling and 
prolix; interpreted by these 
singers, it becomes lucid and 
elegant. The rhetorical richness of 
the words means that the music is 
inevitably low on melody. 

Hammill has never been much of 
a tunesmith. Instead the guitars 
and keyboards surge and retreat, 
pulsing with grandeur and taking 
on a macabre chill as the drama 
unfolds. The collaboration with 
Roger Eno is an intriguing 
experiment in aleatory 
composition which doesn't really 
come off. Hammill and Eno 
improvised in their respective 
studios for exactly an hour at I 
pm on I April 1999. The 
Appointed Hour combines these 
recordings, with no overdubs. 

Conceptually, the idea is 
impeccable; listening to the 
outcome, however, is less than 
enthralling. The pair tinkle away 
pleasantly on guitar and keyboard, 
and the parallel strands 
occasionally coalesce to produce 
moments of stimulation. But for 
the most part this is inoffensive 
background music, devoid of the 
vitality which Hammill normally 
brings to his work. 

RICHARD REES JONES 


oooo 

oooo 


Nocturnal Emissions 

Electropunk Karaoke 

EARTHLY DELIGHTS CD002 CD (2000) 

The title comes from a description of an Emissions gig which appeared 
in this very magazine! Nocturnal Emissions' live performance at The 
Garage last year was a frustrating affair because despite its being far too 
quiet and over an insubstantial PA, the tape of the event sounded like 
I'd attended something worth getting very excited about, even if this 
was far from apparent on the night. This CD collects seven tracks from 
five different NE live sets performed in recent times. I don't know if 
these gigs were as problematic as the one I saw, but whatever the case, 
it’s made for a fucking fantastic CD. As Nigel Ayers has stated 
elsewhere, his live material has of late been quite different to the studio 
produced albums. The live setting is after all a very different one to the 
privacy of your own noise cave, so he's chosen to present an updated 
and remodelled incarnation of the Nocturnal Emissions that produced 
Songs Of Love And Revolution and Shake Those Chains, Rattle Those 
Cages,., and. Lordy - I find it hard to contain my excitement! 'Bring 
Power To Its Knees' and 'No Sacrifice' are the oldest original numbers 
here. They're still immediately recognisable even though the original 
sounds of echo delayed beat boxes forcibly introduced to their own 
arses is replaced by smooth skittery sequences and frenetic sampling. 

'No Sacrifice' is actually one of 
my desert island discs. Very few 
groups have managed to deliver 
direct and simple statements of 
anti-establishment leanings 
without sounding like worthy 
but dull bores (see four million 
drab anarcho-punk bands as of 
1983) and NE not only managed 
to do it with conviction but 
came across as positively poetic 
in the process. 'No Sacrifice' is 
one of the most joyful 
celebrations of not getting a job 
at McDonalds (or whatever) 
that I've heard, put together 
with the irrepressible joy of a 
kid in a toy shop and delivered 
like Mark E. Smith without all 
those french fries on his 
shoulder. A hard act to follow, 
but he’s succeeded by avoiding a 
simple reanimation of the 
vintage model and - Lumme! - 
it's as good as the original! 

The other tracks are largely new 
to me, or at least were as of the 
performance at The Garage. 
Confusingly, there are covers of 
'Venus In Furs' and The Pink 
Fairies' 'Do It', neither of which 
sound particularly out of place. 
There's also the Stephen 
Hawking sampling 'Imaginary 
Time’ and 'Di For Me' which 
goes into pornographic detail 
with some er... eccentric 
observations about the death of 
Prince Chuck's late war-zone 
visiting main squeeze, Although 
the technology is all new, Nigel 



109 







The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


Ayers still seems to approach it with the same haphazard enthusiasm 
that informed his last beat music albums all dem years ago, and as a 
consequence still doesn't sound like any of those other drum machine 
and sequencer acts. Also, his singing has improved, in that you could 
call bits of it 'singing' which wasn't always the case. With the crooning 
and the odd chuckle prompted by something in the audience, this is 
almost Las Vegas without the cheese, the fruit machines, or the mob. 

Electropunk Karaoke is punk rock spirit in the truest sense, rewritten 
for the 2 1 st Century. It's packed with sly humour, warm electric beats 
and is entirely lacking in the cliches that might be wheeled out by less 
able dabblers in either the techno or ye olde punque roque of which 
this is a distant cousin. Play it loud and often, as the man says. 

WAR ARROW 

Earthly Delights, PO BOX 2, Lostwithiel, Cornwall, PL22 OYY, UK. 

La! Neu? 

Year of The Tiger 

JAPAN, CAPTAIN TRIP CTCD-124 CD (1999) 

It doesn't get off to a good start. Random drum pummelling, drunken 
wino shouting and a French housewife trying to sing. One big fucking 
discordant racket basically and it doesn't bode well when I realise the 
playing time is over an hour. Over an hour of this shit?!? 

Thankfully it comes to a sudden stop as LalNeu? really get down to 
business. At first, a Michael Krassner- style minimal piano chord is 
repeated. Gentle swells build behind it, surging forwards, filling the 
void. The music stirs images - helicopters flying over a barren 
landscape, a jet black Plymouth Barracuda surging through Monument 
Valley under a sky loaded with storm clouds. A drumbeat is the 
rotors, the engine roar echoing against the rock walls, throbbing 
against the melody and establishing a perfect soundtrack for the next 
David Lynch film. It's an offbeat road movie and the chase is on. This 
is a long track and develops along vaguely 'symphonic' lines with 
recognisable movements and shifts of emphasis and mood. It never 
degenerates into the cacophony threatened with Track I , finally 
gliding into shore at the 30 minute mark with the 'post rock' flag 
hoisted high. 

The final track is Maori war drums and Viktoria Wehrmeister 
delivering bored intonations of 'Notre Dame' that suggest early 
Kraftwerk and Human League but to be honest, it's little more than 
Enya with art school knobs on. It's not unpleasant but hardly the 
successor to track 2 where LalNeu? clearly shot their wad, creatively 
speaking. 

Having approached this record with no preconceptions or real idea 
about the band I'll admit to being pleasantly surprised by what they 
can achieve when they really pursue an idea to its bitter end. 

Emotions remain distinctly unstirred, which may be the intention, and 
what we're left with is restrained atmospherics that might make good 
background music for painting empty car parks but there's better 
examples already out there so this is just more product to fill the 
shelves. Only for the committed fan, I reckon. 

RIK RAWLING 0 1 / 1 2/ 1 999 

Captain Trip Records, 3-17-14 Minami-Koiwa, Edogawa-Ku, Tokyo, 
Japan 

Mount Florida 

Stealth 

MATADOR OLE399-2 CD SINGLE (1999) 

Maybe it's just me? Maybe I'm just getting old, too old to get 'it' 
anyway - the 'it' being modern music as defined by the 'dance' or 
'electronic' labels (and any of the ever-increasingly hilarious sub-labels. 
Jungle. House. Speed Garage etc etc. I recently heard of a new one - 
'Disco Hop'. It's beyond parody, it really is). It seems there's so much 
of it and so many people doing it that the endless tide of vinyl and 
CDs amount to just so much bric-a-brac found on sale at your 
average Craft Fair. The creation of the work may have given those 
involved some pleasure but it's virtually indistinguishable from any 
other series of blips and bloops farted out in bedrooms and 
basements up and down the country (not to mention the amount of 
'in-sampling' going on with thousands of grooves sharing the same 
hillbilly mutant sonic genes - Fatboy Slim being the Dr Mengele of this 
evil practice). Of course, the same arguments could be levelled at 60s 
garage punk' - a musical genre I happen to like - but the difference 
with that music is that it came bom of the desperation and passion of 


a new and, at that time, unquantified youth culture as opposed to the 
'cool' stance taken in these oh-so-knowing times. This is not the place 
to get into the tired old 'authenticity' debate - let's just say it's easier 
for me to share in the experience of something that sounds fashioned 
by humans as opposed to robots throwing vacuum cleaners down 
staircases. 

Not that such a simple dismissal could be levelled at Mount Florida. Oh 
no. MP Lancaster and 'Twitch' are the carbon-based bipeds behind this 
project, both DJs and dabblers in 'arts/installation' projects. Hmmmm. 
Putting my reservations aside I approached this EP with an open mind 
and I'm pleased to report that I wasn't completely appalled though it's 
got to be said that the press release's suggestion that 'the music they 
produced was neither dance-orientated or soundtrackish' is bollocks. 

This is exactly what you can expect to hear when 'Yoof TV blipverts 
rape your screen - all sounding not a lot unlike the tracks from David 
Holmes' 'Let's Get Killed' that the BBC have used for everything from 
Match of the Day to Holiday. 

There are elements of everything from dub to 'ambient' here but all 
tastefully arranged so that nothing intrudes on the generally restrained 
mood. Picture the scene: the converted loft 'apartment', the cluster of 
cool specimens all wearing the latest tight and baggy things, all smelling 
the same, all thinking the same, all being the same. 

As they drink over-priced piss (not because they like it but because it's 
'cool' to be seen to drink it) they lend one ear to the soundtrack of 
their 'pre-club warmup' and give a considered nod to Mount Florida. 
Titles like 'Lost in Satie' and 'Roc the Vonnegut' (I'm not kidding) hint at 
a depth that simply isn't there. This is lazy, passionless, unassuming and 
about as offensive as a nun. It's the sound of this week's fashionable 
drink evaporating in a glass. It's that good. 

RIK RAWLING 29/1 1/1999 

Matador Records Ltd, PO Box 20 1 25, London WI0 5WA 
www. matadoreurope. com 

Breathless 

Blue Moon 

TENOR VOSSA BREATHCD16 CD (1999) 

Breathless are surely one of the most cruelly ignored groups of the 80s 
and 90s. Blue Moon arrives a full eight years after their last album, 
Between Happiness and Heartache, and is likely to be greeted with the 
same indifferent response. That would be a monumental injustice, for 
the record is a masterpiece - its deeply passionate romanticism flows 
with immense power through every one of its sixty minutes. The 
group's singer and keyboardist, Dominic Appleton, achieved a measure 
of notice with his vocals for the 4AD studio-based project This Mortal 
Coil. His lisping, forlorn voice is a crucial component of the Breathless 
sound. On this album it's surrounded by an abundance of mesmeric 
instrumentation - strident guitars, eerie keyboards and harsh, clattering 
percussion. The opening 'Walk Down To The Water' is seven minutes 
of dramatic, windswept melancholy. In wistful, languorous cadences 
Appleton describes a condition of pure loss and regret, made tangible 
by restrained beats and gentle washes of sound. The song's 
overwhelming sense of desolation is communicated not by sullen 
posturing but through a perfect alignment of emotion and gesture. 

From here on. Breathless never put a foot wrong. 'Magic Lamp' is a 
desperate invocation of sexual jealousy, its choppy rhythms erupting 
frantically into ecstatic currents of guitar. Moments such as this, and 
tracks like 'Come Reassure Me' and the thunderous 'No Answered 
Prayers', recall the tragic luminosity of Joy Division or My Bloody 
Valentine; but Breathless' epic vision is wholly their own, manifested in 
dense harmonic structures and Appleton's harrowing meditations on 
desire, pain and confusion. As if this weren't enough, a limited edition 
bonus CD extends the album even further into abstraction and 
dissonance. 'Moonstone' is fifty minutes of sinister rumbles and 
scrapings, with spare treated guitar and percussion underlining the 
sense of threat. Perfectly complementing the first CD's rapt 
engagement with songform, 'Moonstone' completes an emotionally 
devastating release. 

RICHARD REES JONES 

Tenor Vossa, / Colville Place, London WIP IHN 



110 



The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 

with nails in it at hand just in case. I press play and 
dive behind the sofa waiting for a sonic tsunami to 
blast the flesh from my bones. At first there is 
silence, then a sound a bit like The Smiths comes 
from the speakers. Jangly guitar rock. 'Jingle-jangle' it 
goes for a couple of minutes before turning into Big 
Country with a slightly beefier fuzzbox. Damn. I've 
been duped again! 

Anyway it carries on in this manner for what seems 
longer than the actual duration of the CD. Loud. 
Quiet. Strum. Strum. Jingle. Jingle. Loud again. The 
only thing that seems to be missing is some goateed 
teenager with a conspicuously middle-class name like 
'Parthenon' or 'Findus' mumbling self-conscious 
Americanisms about his girlfriend. 

There is a lesson here for us all, and one which 
probably explains the popularity of others, like 
LaBradford, who prove equally disappointing when 
compared to the claims made by music papers on 


CHEM018CD CD (1997) 

I offer what follows, dear reader, 
not so much as a review, but 
more as a cautionary tale. Some 
time ago I had the misfortune to 
collapse in the street, victim to 
some strange and momentary 
paralysis which deprived me of 
the muscle functions of my body. 
Whilst helpless and supine, a 
copy of the New Musical 
Express , which had been 
discarded in the road, was picked 
up by a gust of wind and blown 
into my face. Unable to animate 
my limbs or call for assistance I 
began to peruse said periodical, 
an action I would have avoided 
under normal circumstances. I 
was interested to read a special 
feature intriguingly called 'No Sell 
Out'. The premise of said item 
was an overview of bands 
renowned for their 
uncompromising refusal to 
kowtow to commercial 
concerns, bands whose unique 
vision burned so bright that it 
sometimes made things difficult 
for them, in an industry where 
schmoozing and shifting units are 
deemed more important than 
staying true to one's convictions. 
Somehow, an article about The 
Clash had erroneously found 
itself printed in this section. I 
dismissed this as a silly mistake; 
besides, I was more interested to 
read of this group Mogwai. What 
praises were sung of them! A five 
piece who perform only 
instrumentals of soul-searing 
guitar noises, veritable 
symphonies of rhythm and 
feedback that drag the listener 
screaming from plateaux of 
nihilist terror to heavenly vistas 
of purest golden light, and back 
again. 'Fuck my old boots,' 
thought I, 'this lot sound like 
they'd eat Ramleh and Splintered 
for breakfast before making 
Merzbow clear away the table 
and do the washing up. Wearing 
a pinny!' 

So, Young Team is in the CD 
player, I'm wearing a crash 
helmet and have a cricket bat 



■Radical 

Mechanics 

Reanimated Death Metal and 
Skinning the Hideof the 
mouidy old Rock Behemoth 

Mogwai 

Young Team 

CHEMIKAL UNDERGROUND 


111 




The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


their behalf. Mogwai might've sounded better had my expectations been less, and I'm 
sure there are people who genuinely love this CD, but then it's not as if we're suffering 
from a shortage of bands at the moment who do the same thing about ten times 
better. I'm only glad I didn't actually buy it. I wonder if the local library might refund 
the 30 pence I frittered away in borrowing this slab of unredeemable shite? 

WAR ARROW 


Fu Manchu 

King Of The Road 

MAMMOTH RECORDS 0103352MAM CD (1999) 

Often dismissed as a laughably 'retro' homage to the populist impression of 70s 
culture, Fu Manchu are very much a 90s band. Music like this wasn't made in the 70s. 
For all the Black Sabbath and Blue Cheer similarities suggested by critics this is very 
much rock of the now. Modern production values bolster the riffs, load the bass with 
Semtex and render the drums something out of Norse legend. In comparison, 
something like 'Paranoid' sounds hopelessly clubfooted and tinny. But, more than that, 
it's the Fu's complexity of structure, tight 'musicianship' (dig it, Mojo readers!) and 
striking ability to fashion something fresh from the hide of the mouldy old rock 
behemoth that stands confidently on its hind legs and pisses all over the doubters. As 
they whinge about comparisons with Kyuss and Monster Magnet they are showered 
with the stark truth - are you going to rock or are you going to fuck off! The dinosaur 
stampede riffs and killer bee swarm fuzz pummel their way to the cerebral cortex and 
demand a Cro-Magnon response from those willing to give themselves totally and 
utterly to it. 

Lyrical concerns are for dragsters, Camaros, hitchhiking chicks in cut-off jeans, Silent 
Running, skateboards, Bigfoot and airbrushed vans. It's nostalgia for a time and place 
that never really happened - not to the extent that 'retro' revivalist media twats would 
hope for. In truth, it never got past the adverts in Marvel Comics but its existence in 
the virtual reality of millions of teenagers imaginations make it no less valid. Lead singer 
Scott Hills was a teen in the 70s and has clearly decided that 'growing up' and 
abandoning his fantasies for leaden dull adult concerns is not for him. Backed up by his 
dudes - all dressed the part in Vans trainers, faded denim and t-shirts - surrounded by 
walls of amps, what we the audience get is an insistently realised neverwhere for us all 
to indulge in. After all the tiresome irony and fakery of the 90s it's great to see 
someone with the courage to stand for what they believe in. Fu Manchu are not 
kidding. All the packaging (skateboarders stoked, Sammy Hagar poodle wigs, beach 
buggies, bordered logos) is perfect down to the last detail. But it's nowhere near lazy 
club flier 'appropriation', these are totems for the True Believers, signifiers of intent 
and purpose - which is, quite simply, to Rock Like Bastards. 

When 'reality' is minimum wage slavery, pension plans and reward points all we've got 
to fall back on are our fantasies. So let's make sure they're good ones! Make mine Fu 
Manchu. 'Nuff said. 

RIKRAWLING 01/12/1999 

info@mammoth. com 
www. mammoth, com 
www. fu-manchu. com 

Nine Inch Nails 

The Fragile 

NOTHING CIDD 8091/490 473-2 2 X CD (1999) 

As everyone already seems to have a fixed opinion regarding Nine Inch Nails, a review 
such as this is probably unlikely to make a difference one way or the other, particularly 
as the reasons why many find them almost unlistenable are the exact same reasons that 
I just can't get enough. At worst they're characterised as one big long Yankee 
teen-goth temper tantrum, which really is doing a disservice to the evidently great 
amount of care and attention that Trent Reznor puts into his records, Sure, he whines 
and wails like Harry Enfield's Kevin the teenager; this music is as terminally 
introspective and stuffed with pimply self hatred as it gets, and without the smarmy 
irony of slightly hipper acts like Ministry or those other turgid industrial guitar clones. 

As it happens, the lack of irony is refreshing, and it isn't as if there's a shortage of it 
elsewhere in rock. I suspect what puts many off NIN is actually their success in getting 
bums on seats. They were for a while the perfect MTV group. Whether by accident or 
design, the fusion of the grunge aesthetic with nasty electronics and the nihilism turned 
up to 10 just seemed to strike a lot of chords within the mallrat nation, leading to the 
assumption 'it can't be cool, my kid sister likes it.' I saw the most extreme example of 
this in an advert on Mexican TV, selling something that the language barrier prevented 
me from quite getting, aided by loads of cute little Mexican kids bouncing around in a 
park to tinny pop. My eyes popped out of my head at one little shortie wearing a NIN 
T-shirt, and I hope to God that her parents don't let her go to school, swinging a 
satchel full of Barbies, singing 'I want to fuck you like an animal. I want to feel you from 
the inside.' Anyway, enough of this. I realise that this may be a rather radical concept, 
but just because something is popular with garage mechanics, little kids, or (shudder) 
people who never went to university, it doesn't by definition have to be bad. 


It's been a while since the last proper album, and 
perhaps with the realisation that The Downward 
Spiral should've been an impossible act to follow, Mr 
Reznor's taken his time and by the sound of it, 
literally sweated blood in order to do just that. Not 
only has he succeeded in going one further, but he's 
actually made it a lengthy double CD that doesn't let 
up for a minute. The usual bits and pieces are here, 
the grinding synths, the distressed noises cruelly 
sampled into strict tempo, the Black Sabbath riff-fest 
(© Tommy Vance 1982), the screwy time signatures, 
the juxtaposition of hard noise with softly recorded 
acoustic instruments, and the teenage poetry. This 
isn't to say it's more of the same exactly. Somehow 
this is a more panoramic effort than its predecessor, 
without really being anything that could resemble 
stadium rock. Sniffy remarks aside, somehow the fact 
that The Downward Spiral was recorded at a 
location notorious as the scene of the Manson killings 
infused that record with a certain atmosphere. Shit 
and death and tragic lunacy seemed to emanate from 
the grooves; it has a certain Nevada desert ambience. 
This was recorded in New Orleans and you get a 
similar effect with the stranger- lynching bayou 
landscape of Southern Comfort insinuating itself into 
the background. All this death and horror isn't even 
used as the predictable Ministry-style stick with 
which to beat listeners over the head. It's exactly 
what it says on the tin, death and horror and 
self-loathing in all its awful spectacle, just as it feels in 
real life before some smug wanker turns it into 
'confrontational art'. NIN's music has nothing to do 
with black clothes, murderers, piercing yer todger or 
any of the usual rock window-dressing. It is the most 
painfully internalised music I've heard. Much of this 
album feels like it's completely unaware of anyone 
out there who might be listening, imposing upon the 
listener the status of an uneasy voyeur to the 
unravelling emotional implosion. The lyrics aren't the 
greatest ever written, but it almost doesn't matter. I 
doubt that many people become Tennyson on the 
occasion of penning a suicide note. It is the simplicity 
of the words, and the agonising conviction with 
which they are sung that imbues them with a power 
beyond the contents of the syntax. There is to my 
knowledge no NIN track called 'Why Am I So Much 
More Sensitive Than Everyone Else?' (although some 
come close) but I have no doubt that he could turn 
even that line into something that would take the skin 
off your custard. 

There's no point in picking out the finer songs. I 
might as well just print a full track list. Despite all the 
twists and turns, from the reanimated death metal to 
the more restrained but still noisy pieces to the 
valium glow piano codas with unorthodox rhythms, it 
never drops into cruise mode for even a second. 
There’s quite a few different musicians but The 
Fragile still sounds like it's all going on inside the head 
of one extremely tortured soul, Adrian Belew is 
here, and rather tantalisingly, Dr Dre turns up to mix 
one track. I'd heard that Dre was working with NIN 
and it strikes one as a pairing so bizarre that it sort of 
makes sense, so hopefully this isn't the end of that 
particular story. 

Nine Inch Nails should be treasured. Trent Reznor's 
music takes introspection to such an unbearable 
extreme that it ceases to be an aesthetic, ceases to 
be a part of showbiz. Think of the most intensely 
oppressive piece of music you've heard and then 
imagine that it rocks like a motherfucker. The Fragile. 
Joy Division are Chas and Dave, and AC/DC were 
the authors of minimalist tone poetry. 

WAR ARROW 


112 


The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


— Ski 

11 

iload of 

T-a-j 

1 

c 





overdue returns from the Ferric Library 


lain Paxton 

Landscape 

Problems 

CASSETTE C60 (?1 995) 

This wasn't actually sent for 
review. In feet I can't recall quite 
when it turned up in a jiffy bag, 
and I never properly determined 
why it was sent to me, this being 
in pre-Skipload Of Tapes days. 
Presumably I have accrued such a 
volume of obscure and 
occasionally unlistenable 
cassettes that my collection has 
achieved critical mass and is now 
expanding exponentially, drawing 
other works into itself from 
across the world by somehow 
exertingan influence on the 
collective unconscious. This leads 
me to the unpleasant conclusion 
that my ferric library will soon 
collapse under the mass of its 
own gravity, becoming a single 
superdense singularity-oxide 
cassette which weighs more than 
the sun, and sounds a bit like 
Nurse With Wound. 

Landscape Problems doesn't 
sound like Nurse With Wound, 
although it's in the same ballpark. 
Perhaps not that close to where 
Steve Stapleton, dressed as an 
elephant, is urging his team on 
with a string of incoherent 
onomatopoeias, but fairly near 
the factor X hot dog stand with 
its 1 5 different flavours of 
ketchup. Most of this is recorded 
by basic means, but not so basic 
as to detract in any way from the 
contents. The instrumentation 
comes largely from a 
randomly-played acoustic guitar, 
accompanied by sound loops of 
itself, speeded up, slowed down, 
and running normally. I'd guess a 
sampler is involved as a means of 
looping certain noises, and 
there's some lovely knackered 
old tape loops as well, none of 
which are used as rhythm 
substitutes. Other sounds derive 
from an old music box, 
environmental recordings, and 
the like. Even with the tape 
trickery and the odd electronic 
noise it all seems richly acoustic. 
If this sounds a little confusing, 


titles like 'Jackpot In A Dog Shop' 
and 'Gaz Disaster' appear 
reluctant to give up any further 
clues. Technically speaking I 
would probably say Landscape 
Problems is unlistenable, but it's 
so nicely done and unpredictable 
that the oddness just keeps you 
going, wondering what's coming 
next, which is no mean feat 
considering there's only a fairly 
limited range of sounds being 
used. 

This may not even be available 
any more, but if curious try: 

lain Paxton, 1 48 Abbey 

Foregace, Shrewsbury, 

Shropshire, UK 

Konstruktivists 

Kracked At The 
Konservatory 

EE TAPES ET34 CASSETTE 
C88 (1995) 

Nearly an hour and a half of 
music improvised live in the 
studio by the 1995 line-up of 
Konstruktivists, a group whose 
personnel seems to change 
almost as often as does the 
spelling of their name. The cover 
informs us that this should be 
'Massed as Eurock', which seems 
as good a description as any. To 
be specific I think this means that 
band see it in terms of following 
a strain which leads back to Can, 
La Dusseldorf. Kraftwerk and the 
like. Do not purchase expecting 
to hear one of those 
hairy-chested Eurovision rejects 
that had a big hit in 1985 and is 
now reduced to appearances on 
Eurotrash or in front of a 
dwindling fen club of lunatics. 

The ten tracks are divided up 
neatly, so although improvised it 
seems fair to assume that it was 
done around a basic framework 
of programming, breaks for tea 
and use of toilet facilities. The 
dominant sounds are synth and 
keyboard derived, carried along 
by programmed and live 
electronic drums, and far from 
simply aping Krautrock 
forefathers it reminds me a bit of 
Chris and Cosey, or at least what 


that pair would sound like if they 
still had some creative spark 
informing their well-meant but 
sterile music. The tracks sort of 
start and amble along for a while 
without going anywhere specific, 
but there's enough going on in 
there - percussive flurries and 
hidden patterns emerging from 
the undergrowth - to hold the 
attention. 

After eight solid albums, probably 
hundreds of tapes, and a brace of 
bizarre singles spread over 
twenty years in this crazy world 
of showbiz, it should be fairly 
obvious that Konstruktivists are 
serious about their music, and 
frankly it's astonishing that a few 
more of you lot haven't taken 
notice by now. It just goes to 
show the power of marketing, or 
failing that putting a picture of a 
sodding gas chamber on the 
cover. With CD rereleases it's 
not even as if you have to pay 
£50 for early monsterpieces like 
A Dissemb/y or Psycho Genetika. 
Come on, let's see some bums 
on seats out there. Buy the 
godammn tape, already. 

EE Tapes, Duivenhoeksestraat 

14, 4569 TJ Graauw (Paal), 

Flo/land 

Regular 

Untitled 

N/A, CASSETTE C90 (1998) 

The Ceramic Hobs CD reviewed 
in ATOMS OF PURE NOISE was 
sent with a letter of shirty but 
valid remarks, one of which was 
that the medium through which 
music is promoted is no 
indication of quality. There's 
some blinding stuff on cassette, 
and there's some deeply useless 
rubbish available on CD. Okay, 
so it's an obvious point, or at 


least should be, but it worth 
restating every so often. Regular 
is a vivid illustration of this. He's 
been doing music for years in the 
privacy of a flat above a pie and 
mash shop, leaking the odd tape 
to the outside world on all too 
infrequent occasions. He 
should've been massive, but the 
closest he ever got was almost 
becoming a member of Wolfgang 
Press, which didn't happen. So he 
stuck to his own thing, just for 
pleasure, and due to a lack of 
enthusiasm for all that 
self-promotion stuff, never really 
bothered with hawking tapes 
around. Which is a shame, 
because this is real 
groundbreaking stuff. 

The influences are mainly of the 
(pre-1990) Adrian Sherwood, 
Scientist, Lee Perry and Jah 
Wobble school, with dollops of 
Tommy Trinder and similar 
chirpy Cockney entertainers of 
yesteryear, who are alluded to in 
titles such as 'Reg Varney's 
Mobile Coconut Shy'. That said, 
this music doesn't sound 
overwhelmingly influenced by any 
one source, although there are 
groups making tracks which now 
sound like Regular tracks from 
over a decade ago. He was doing 
Massive Attack years before that 
hyped -up trip hop thing took off, 
at a time when Bristol's finest 
were Vice Squad for gawd's sake. 
Most of the tracks are driven by 
deep bass and deftly programmed 
drum patterns, which seem too 
organic to have originated from a 
little box with buttons on, 
sounding more like one of those 
late 70s dub plate rhythm giants 
who, although having smoked 
such an unfeasible volume of 
space fags that he's lost the ability 
to speak, stand, or remember his 
own name, seems to have 



113 



The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


ascended to a higher plane of 
mesmeric percussion. Vocals are 
rare, but heavily treated tapes 
are used sparingly for 
atmosphere. I'm told there's a lot 
of sampled material, but each 
track is so heavily worked over 
and remixed and reworked and 
rewired that much of it is 
undetectable or irrelevant. 
There's some Portishead 
apparently, which seems to me 
akin to David Bowie ripping off 
Gary Numan, but little else I can 
easily identify. Regular music is 
lavish and spacious, pregnant 
with unspecified potential, 
brilliantly produced, and above all 
deeply evocative without being 
all new-age and soppy. If Mad 
Frankie Fraser had grown up 
listening to Regular he'd have 
been Reasonable Frankie Fraser. 
Similarly Brian Blessed would be 
renowned for an inscrutable and 
soft spoken approach to his 
trade. This stuff really is superb. 

If you run a record label, I don't 
care who you are, I'll bet this 
tape is superior to 99% of your 
output. Being a reclusive 
individual, who isn't really too 
fussed about whether anyone 
else hears this. Regular supplies 
no contact address, but - if 
anyone is interested, I'll forward 
any mail sent care of this 
magazine. 

Lode Runner 

Locked 

RACING ROOM / XERXES 
CASSETTE C46 (1999) 

I found the last Lode Runner 
offering disorientating but 
promising in that it suggested 
there were better things to 
come. If anything Locked is 
probably even more confusing 
than The Bubble Sort, but 
somehow manages to convince 
with a greater conviction. It's 
packed to the brim with 
unpredictable forty noises 
resulting from what sounds like 
one of those garden shed-sized 
computers of days gone by that's 
suffering from the after effects of 
a bad pint. You know the sort of 
thing - 'I feel like death warmed 
up this morning but I can't have 
had more than 1 5 last night. One 
of them must've been a bad pint!' 
Either that or the author has 
used the playing surface of his 
Derek Bailey In A Moulinex CD 
as a temporary jam storage area 
and damn - why won't this thing 
play right? My stereo must be 
fucked! 

No insomniacs are going to be 
reaching for Locked as a relaxing 
prelude to visiting the land of 
nod, and the most musical (or at 
least rhythmical) stuff sounds like 
something The Daleks might 


unwind to after Doctor Who 
kicked their arses on Orestes, 
the Ogron planet seen in the final 
episodes of Malcolm Hulke's 
classic 1 973 tale Frontier In 
Space. My track notes made for 
the purposes of this review range 
from ‘short wave radio falling 
down a fire escape' to 'William 
Bennett shits himself in a wind 
tunnel', and as descriptions go, 
seem accurate enough to 
reproduce here. It isn't entirely 
my bag, but of its kind I've heard 
a lot worse. The sound quality is 
good so you get full benefit of the 
cheesegrater textures, and it 
does appear to know what it's 
doing. This may seem vague, but 
a lot of noise music sounds to me 
like it hasn't got a clue and is just 
busily making a racket because 
Darren's mam says he's having 
his tea, it's too cold to doss 
about down the precinct, and 
there's nothing on telly. 

If, after reading this, you're on 
your way into town to pick up 
the latest Dissecting Table hot 
biscuit, or some other distorted 
recording of overtime at the 
canning factory, think again. Save 
yourself a pointless journey and 
twenty quid. Send for this 
instead. Just because it isn't 
famous, and doesn't have some 
worrying porno on the cover, 
doesn't necessarily mean it isn't 
equally, or even more, deserving 
of your attention. 

Racing Room, 37 Egmont 

Road, New Malden, Surrey 

KT3 4AT, UK 

Xerxes, c/o Yasutoshi Yoshida. 

203 Fujimori-Kata, 1-4-5 

Wakabayashi, Satagay-Ku, 

Tokyo 154-0023, Japan 

Unit 

The Solo Sessions 
1989-1999 

VING CHUN PRODUCTIONS, 
CASSETTE C60 (2000) 

I've often found amusement in 
the paradox presented by some 
current exponents of the blues, 
screaming out old standards from 
the comfort of a yuppie cafe bar 
and a high powered day job at 
the advertising agency; virtuoso 
reproductions of songs originally 
written by folk in desperate 
circumstances, the poetic 
expression of needing to keep 
body and soul together reduced 
to meaningless signifiers of 
vitality with as little, or less, 
weight as anything you'd find in 
Spanish techno; 'Woke up this 
morning and found myself dead' 
as an archaic way of saying 'boom 
boom boom the Vengabus is 
back in town'. Andy Martin of 
Unit has addressed this 
contradiction with 'Perrier Road', 
like the poor sap who was beaten 


to that meeting at the crossroads 
by Robert Johnson, he vocalises 
with believable intensity 'you 
know I had it hard, yeah, I had it 
so bad; one lousy business and 
shares in IBM was all I inherited 
from my Dad.' I don't think I've 
ever heard deadpan sarcasm used 
with such devastating intensity. 

For those who don't know, Andy 
has been making music for quite 
a while. In punkier days he was 
partially responsible for The 
Apostles, who produced a 
lengthy string of albums, EPs and 
cassettes. They were starkly 
differentiated from their noisier 
brethren by intelligent lyrics and 
some beautifully melodic guitar 
work falling somewhere between 
a brainier Alternative TV and Joy 
Division without the aspirin. As 
someone for whom ground zero 
was as a homeless and 
uneducated ex-inmate of 
Springfield mental hospital, 
without parents or shares in ICI 
to fall back on, he probably has 
more license to sing the blues 
than most of us - and does so at 
great length on this cassette. 
There are covers and 
appropriations of old masters 
ranging from John Mayall and 
Manfred Mann to Willie Dixon 
and John Lee Hooker. The 
playing is a little loose and raw in 
places but this lends the tape an 
explosive vitality entirely lacking 
in that freeze-dried note perfect 
version of the blues you get on 
yer Jools Holland show. The 
production is a little odd in 
places, emphasising the guitar and 
vocals more than is usual, but 
then this is consistent with 
earlier releases by Unit which 
tend to downplay the rhythm 
section in order to give greater 
focus to the melody. If it means 
anything. I'd generally cross the 
road, the channel, and half of 
Europe to avoid the Visa card 
version of 20th century UK 
blues, but I can't get enough of 
this cassette. 

Neither is it all 1 2-bar tales of 
woe and revenge. There are a 
few songs of distinctly Asiatic 
inclination: 'Giai Phong' based 
upon a traditional Vietnamese 
folk tune is an uplifting acoustic 
number showcasing Andy's 
sublime vocal harmonies which 
will have you wondering how 
he's managed to remain obscure 
for so long. The instrumental 
'Muon Chet Khong?' is pure punk 
rock of the kind that fans of The 
Clash will never be able to 
understand. It leaves me 
incapable of offering any 
description more succinct than a 
slightly shellshocked 'fuckin' 
brilliant!' There's even a sort of 
rumbling industrial piece, and a 
solo vocal rendition, of 'Willie 
MacKintosh’. Come on now - 
when was the last time you heard 


a cassette that combined the 
blues with hard rock, free noise 
and folk music from China, 
Vietnam and Scotland? Not 
content with the simple act of 
creating such a bizarre cocktail, 
Mr. Martin actually pulls it off 
without so much as a visible 
seam, and a passion and humour 
sadly lacking in so many of his 
contemporaries. Far from falling 
flat on its arse like it should, this 
peculiar hybrid takes off with 
such conviction that you'll 
wonder why nobody's done it 
before. Why is this man 
producing cassettes when his 
name should be up there with 
the greats? You don't have to buy 
this tape, but it's your loss if you 
don't. I'm told it retails for the 
fine punky DIY ethic price of 
£ 1 .50, which if correct, surely 
leaves you with little choice. 

Hmmm? 

BBP Tapes, Box 81, 82 Colston 
Street, Bristol, Avon, BSI 5 BE, 
UK 

The Skip 
reviewed by 
WAR ARROW 

SKIPLOAD OF 
TAPES 

COMPETITION! 

Due to quantum fluctuations of 
chronoton particles a wormhole has 
opened up in granular spacetime 
linking the Skipload mailbox to the 
five dimensional co-ordinates of an 
instant slightly prior to the 
publication of the last issue of The 
Sound Projector. The result is that 
the thousands of entries sent to last 
issue's competition have somehow 
remained in a state of temporal flux, 
thus giving the entirely erroneous 
impression that no fucker's been 
bothered to enter. Therefore until 
this anomaly within the spacetime 
continuum can be resolved without 
the creation of any paradox through 
the Blinovitch limitation effect (my 
inadvertently becoming my own 
father; a reader becoming the author 
of a tape he or she has just sent for 
etc.) last issue's questions still stand. 
They were: 

1 . Big Bloke. He was in The Cravats. 
Anagram of ehdSn. 

2. Canine mammal. Four legs. Begins 
with D. Barks. 

3. When is it generally thought that 
the curtains came down on the 
Anasazi culture of the South Western 
United States? 

Answers on a postcard, with your 
address, to this magazine and marked 
Skipload Of Tapes Competition. In 
the unlikely event of a tie. the winner 
will be the one who got the answers 
right and will thus become the lucky 
recipient of items reviewed in this 
column, most of which are probably 
superior to whatever rubbish you're 
listening to as you sit there reading 
this. Go on, be a devil. I’ll throw in 
some CDs if you ask nicely. 


114 


The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


S«UNDB«MBING 


A Bonanza of Hip-Hop and Rap CDs reviewed by WAR ARROW 

£}£ ^ £%■ 



Jay-Z 

Volume 3...Life And 
Times of S. Carter 

USA, ROC-A-FELLA / DEF 
JAM 314 546 822-2 CD (1999) 

I've avoided Jay-Z for as long as 
possible. At one point he was on 
the cover of every magazine, 
including TV Quick, Older But 
Bolder and Bunt y, and I'm 
generally suspicious of anyone 
who suddenly achieves such 
ubiquity. He follows me to work 
in the form of Melvin, his spitting 
image. Interestingly enough, I've 
never seen Jay-Z and Melvin in 
the same room at the same time. 
One evening I heard the Tim 
Westwood show, quite by 
accident. I usually avoid his 
broadcasts because, despite some 
good tunes, his silly unconvincing 
accent causes me intense pain. 
What held my attention in this 
instance were a couple of truly 
ginormous tracks. I missed the 
announcement but it sounded 
like Jay-Z. He appeared to be 
rapping over a fucked CD. There 
were drum sounds aplenty, but 
any resemblance to a beat was 
entirely lost. Few could attempt 
such a thing without 
embarrassing themselves, let 
alone make it sound good. Sheer 
genius. With this being a few days 
before the release of Jay-Z's third 
I drew the same conclusions that 
anyone would, and rushed out to 
bag one of the bounders. 


Well, none of the tracks I'd been 
impressed by are here, but I'm 
glad to have joined the ranks of 
all those accountants who go to 
work with a Jay-Z album stowed 
away in the briefcase. He's from 
New York, and despite a certain 
nasal whine factor, distinguishes 
himself from the homogenous 
multitudes with ease. He doesn't 
sound like he's either half-cut, or 
only just woken up, as do many 
of the New York set. The main 
difference is that lyrically he's 
way ahead of the pack. As well as 
possessing a degree of wit, he 
avoids those same lines that most 
of his immediate neighbours 
churn out. He tells stories, rather 
than just going on and on and on 
about his knob / criminal record / 
bitches / train set. Of course, 
these subjects crop up - well, 
except for the bit about the train 
set - but never just as a load of 
words for the sake of having 
something to rhyme about. 
Musically, it's pretty much razor 
sharp all the way, reminding me 
of the hard clean electron ica of 
the last Foxy Brown album, on a 
grander scale. I'm pleased to note 
the sampling of King Ghidora's 
electronic roar on 'So Ghetto'. 
Anyone who's down with 
Godzilla films is okay in my book. 
Swizz Beats produces a few 
tracks, which are saved by the 
fact that Jay-Z is in the starring 
role. Timbaland also provides a 
couple of numbers, which aren't 
all up to his usual standard 


(perhaps he's been listening to 
Swizz Beats) but again can't really 
fail with Mr Carter on deck. This 
said, Timbaland's 'Snoopy Track', 
in which embarrassed robots 
attempt to conceal sneaked -out 
farts at the cybervicar's tea party, 
are perfectly matched by 
Juvenile's drawled guest vocal, 
providing one of the album's 
finest. How the hell did I ever get 
the wrong impression about this 
guy? 

There's something a bit epic 
going on here. 'Hova Song' 
should be announced from the 
steps of the Acropolis with a 
toga-clad Jay-Z handing the stone 
tablets down to Charlton 
Heston. Split into two brief parts 
it serves as both intro and outro, 
which is mighty frustrating as it 
sounds like it should go on for 
about twelve minutes with 
ever-greater choirs of angels 
joining in at the end of each bar. 
As the first part fades to make 
way for what follows, a quiet 
reflective voice warns 'five-ten 
years from now you're gonna 
wish there was American 
commission...five-ten years from 
now...they're gonna miss Jay-Z.' 
Nope. I don't know what it's all 
about either, but as spoken 
rather than written words, it 
dishes out the cold shivers in 
spades. This doesn't feel like just 
another rap disc, it feels like a big 
album that's going to be making it 
into lists of such things for years 
to come. If for some reason this 


turns out to be his swan song, 
five-ten years from now...they 
really are going to miss Jay-Z. 

Aim 

Cold Water Music 

GRAND CENTRAL 
RECORDS GCCD 105 CD 
(1999) 

Homegrown UK hip-hop is 
overlooked all too often, not 
least by myself I'm ashamed to 
admit. The reason isn't one of 
quality, but more because there's 
a lot more of it coming from 
America, and with a bigger 
advertising budget. Even our own 
(recommended) Hip Hop 
Connection magazine has 
confessed it doesn't put UK 
talent on the cover because 
unfortunately this would mean 
the difference between people 
buying the mag or not. 

One reviewer wrote that Aim 
sound a bit like Fat Boy Slim, 
which is a terrible thing to say 
about anyone. Slightly deterred 
by such a report, I bought the 
CD anyway. It's more like what 
Fat Boy Slim THINKS he might 
sound like. Cold Water Music 
oozes the jazzy cool that Cookie 
would give his left one to 
achieve. It's largely a sombre and 
reflective album, almost bluesy 
but with different notes. The 
upbeat numbers get there 
without losing any grace or 



115 








The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


dignity, avoiding the obvious 
route where good cheer sounds 
like a happy wet dog wearing a 
clown's hat, as favoured by that 
certain ex-member of a turdy 
indie band. Four of the tracks 
feature rappers, all of whom 
confirm that we have no trouble 
holding our own against the 
Americans in this field. Every 
number is a widescreen classic of 
John Barry proportions, without 
suggesting scale by mere pomp 
or self importance. If John Barry 
was raised in Moss Side on a diet 
of Public Enemy, well. ..actually I 
don't even know if he would 
sound like this. Cold Water 
Music is quite different to 
anything I've heard in a long 
while. 

The cover has the thoroughbred 
styling of one of those old 
bachelor's lounge records, with 
National Geographic quality 
cover photo, loads of little logos 
and proclamations of 'long 
playing microgroove full 
frequency range recording.' 
There's even a 'happy listening 
music lover' blurb on the back. 
Traditionally such things usually 
promise that group sex with 
nymphomaniacs will be the lot of 
he who listens to the album. 

Sadly, I've never found this to be 
the case, so it's nice to read a 
cover blurb that isn't just 
word-salad. The author writes 
'when I drive with Aim in the 
tapedeck the view seems 
somehow deeper and richer', and 
I couldn't hope to put it better 
myself. His aim is true. Right on 
target, etc etc (insert your own 
pun here). 

20 Oldham Street, Manchester 
Ml IJN, UK 

www.grandcentra/records. co. uk 

Master P 

Only God Can 
Judge Me 

USA, NO LIMIT RECORDS 
P2 50092 CD (1999) 

What’s he playing at? First (he 
says) Da Last Don was his final 
solo album. Then we were to be 
treated to a Greatest Hits 
collection. Then the collection 
had the title named above. I 
rushed out and bought this 
expecting to find 'Ghetto D', 
'Anything Goes' and 'Bourbons 
and Lacs' amongst P's finest 
moments. It was puzzling that not 
only were the aforementioned 
trunk bangers absent, but none of 
the titles seemed familiar. It turns 
out that this is his comeback set. 
Bloody hell! His retirement 
album only came out last year! 

He must live with an accelerated 
perception of time. Which is 


probably the case, given that 
(solo or not) he crams five year's 
work into six months. Welcome 
back P, even though you didn't go 
away. 

No Limit is felling off, they say. 

P's doing too much, spreading 
himself too thin, they've written 
in reviews of this album. The 
claim in the advert that P's 
comeback is the rap event of the 
decade is probably overdoing it, 
and this took about three plays 
to sink in. But I don't see the 
neon sign that proclaims 'PAST 
IT' lighting up. There's a couple 
of tracks that have yet to prove 
themselves to these ears. 
'Boonapalist' (P talk for girlfriend, 
main squeeze, bird, boo, totty, 
etcetera - these linguistic 
affectations just get weirder and 
weirder) doesn't quite set my 
ears on fire, but then I could say 
the same about the odd number 
even on stone cold classics like 
Ghetto D and Ice Cream Man. 
What counts is the good stuff, 
which dominates the CD. 

Master P, now that the initial 
excitement about the rise of No 
Limit has subsided, is taking a lot 
of flack. Lyrically, he isn't 
groundbreaking, and he does 
repeat himself somewhat, but - as 
has been the case since day one - 
he compensates for any 
shortcomings. Simplistic and 
repetitive or not, P comes 
through by sheer force of 
personality. There's rappers who 
should be in the Guinness Book 
Of Records for the most syllables 
crammed into one line, or the 
widest vocabulary, or whatever. 
Word-count though is only half 
of the story, and some of these 
gifted folks might raise an 
eyebrow without inspiring me to 
dig out the CD twice a year. 
Master P may not be painting 
with an enormously varied 
palette. On the other hand, after 
playing a Master P album you half 
expect to find him materialised in 
your kitchen, making himself a 
sandwich and offering a 
trademarked 'Uuuuuugh - ya 
heard me?' by way of 
explanation. 

Maybe the title, and back cover, 
where P carries what could 
either be a couple of 
gravestones, or tablets bestowed 
upon him in a repeat of the 
whole Moses incident, hint at a 
certain degree of immodesty. But 
what the fuck - there really IS 
some fine stuff here. 'Ghetto In 
The Sky' is as compellingly soulful 
as anything Marvin Gaye ever did. 
'Stop Playing Wit Me' is another 
of those stuttery 

shiver-down-the-spine tracks that 
nobody seems to do quite like 
No Limit. 'Y'AII Don't Want 
None' does the 

being-run-over-by-a-tank thing, 


not least due to the appearance 
of Mystikal, who STILL sounds 
like a bomb going off in a rap 
factory. 'Da Bailers', featuring P's 
fellow Southern multimillionaire 
Jermaine Dupri of So So Def, 
bumps and grinds just like you'd 
hope a track from such a 
combination would. Even 'Crazy 
Bout Ya', where P is joined by 
Mercedes and Peaches for one of 
those last song at the village 
disco slowies, carves sweet soul 
from a genre I'd more commonly 
associate with unlistenable 
saccharine mush. 

The gold medal goes without a 
doubt to 'Get Yo Mind Right' 
where P and C-Murder do their 
stuff over music provided by 
New Birth. New Birth I know 
nothing about, except that they 
seem to be a full-sized live band, 
you know, with real instruments 
and that. They do a sort of 
Gypsy-Cajun violin powered 'it's 
a funeral but let's have a 
knees-up anyway' thing. It's quite 
amazing. Unless I'm showing my 
ignorance, it sounds like that 
darn fool kid's just invented a 
whole new branch of hip hop. 

Master P is back, and this isn't his 
greatest hits, but a whole new 
album. Do you really need to ask 
if it's any good? 

Various Artists 
Violator - The Album 

USA, VIOLATOR / DEF JAM 
314 558 941-2 CD (1999) 

This compilation has now sold so 
many copies and is so famous 
that I've seen whitebread 
computer programmers wearing 
the T-shirt.. .in Dulwich! 
Everybody is on it. You name 
them, they're here. I expect even 
you, dear reader, are on this 
compilation somewhere. Yes, 
YOU. Mrs C Morgan of Ruislip, 
sitting there reading this 
magazine, even YOU are present, 
teamed up with Busta Rhymes 
and Noreaga. We're one step 
closer to that holy grail of hip 
hop collections where even the 
special guests have special guests. 

Violator is a sort of label cum 
management thing, based in New 
York, whence many of these 
folks hail. There's some good 
stuff by Fat Joe, Big Pun, Triple 
Seis, The Beatnuts, Cru, Q-Tip, 
and Mysonne. LL Cool J goes 
with a catchy Spanish guitar 
number which keeps threatening 
to turn into the Pearl & Dean 
music. The dirty South is 
represented by Eightball and Hot 
Boy$. Busta Rhymes turns up on 
four of the tracks - even though 
it seems like more - with his 
crazy 


whooping-noises-over-a-beat 
antics. Busta. We love your 
records, really we do. That Janet 
Jackson one was great. So was 
the 'put your hands where my 
eyes can see' song, but please, for 
fuck's sake, take a holiday. 

Still, at least you could never 
confuse Busta with anyone else, 
which, this being a New York set, 
is the main problem with the rest 
of it. Every day some new East 
Coast rapper seems to turn up 
and go platinum with the same 
old lines about the same old thing 
with the same old anonymous 
nasal whine. Haven't you people 
heard of Vick's Sinex? Since when 
did hip hop cred become 
proportionally represented by 
the tonnage of snot you can keep 
up your hooter at any given 
time? Of the human bogie 
storage units in question, the 
most mystifying must surely be 
Noreaga. How come he's so big? 
You can always tell it's Noreaga 
because he says 'what'. Many 
rappers have a special noise 
because, well, they just do. 

Master P has 'uuugh', MC Eiht has 
'geauh'. Noreaga says 'what' 
usually about 27 times in a row, 
because if he didn't, nobody 
would have a fucking clue who 
was on the mic. It could be any 
of about 5,000 others. Okay 
Nore, you can start now. After 
five solid minutes of 'what' we've 
realised it's you. One day 
Noreaga will do a track where he 
just says 'what' 700 times, over a 
beat. Where's Malcolm's Mum 
when we need her? 

None of these people are bad or 
without talent, it's just that you 
can't tell one from the other 
without referring to the track 
list. At the moment the simple 
fact of coming from New York 
seems to imply there's some kind 
of genius at work, when , a lot of 
these folks are kind of average. 
The kindest I can say about some 
of them is that they succeed in 
filling up three minutes of a CD. 
The same goes for the music. 
Some of it's great, but most of it 
just happens and then goes away 
in time for the next number. 
Swizz Beats supplies the final 
track and he seems to be 
symptomatic of this bizarre 
NYcentric attitude that prevails. I 
haven't heard everything he's 
done, but what I have heard fails 
dismally to live up to its publicity. 
His plinky-plonky hip hop 
interpretations of traditional 
oriental music are alright, but 
folks pay him $5,000 a track. 

Lord have mercy! Treat ME to a 
pint and some crisps and I'll do 
something ten times as good. 

He's no Timbaland. He's not even 
Puff Daddy. 

If you go ape for the 
homogenised Big Apple whine, 


116 


The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 


you'll be like a dog with two tails 
listening to this. There's enough 
here for an above average EP, but 
with regards to the disparity 
between what Violator promises 
and what it does, I'm reminded 
of the man from Long Island who 
famously said don 't believe Che 
hype. 

Full Blooded 

Memorial Day 

USA, NO LIMIT P2 50027 CD 
(1998) 

Why did I shell out a massive 
import price for this? Firstly as an 
attempt to discover evidence 
that No Limit are, as some claim, 
past it. This wasn't one of their 
best sellers by a long shot. It 
wasn't advertised so well. Full 
Blooded is perhaps a bit of an 
unknown quantity, so, I reasoned, 
if Beats By The Pound really are 
stretching themselves to breaking 
point in providing the music for 
at least 50 No Limit albums per 
day, then chances are that the 
stuff they knocked out with 
paper, comb and a pair of spoons 
will have ended up on an album 
such as this. The second reason 
is that Full Blooded himself 
makes brief but highly 
memorable appearances on Da 
Crime Family, and the / Got The 
Hook-Up soundtrack album. 
Thirdly, Memorial Day has a 
fucking great cover. 

Eighteen squid for 1 6 tracks is a 
lot, but it's well spent. Full 
Blooded is, unless I’m getting my 
wires crossed, a member of 
Hounds Of Gert Town, who 
themselves have made an album. 
Senor Blooded's fellow hounds, 
Nite Time and Camouflage, 
appear extensively on this album, 
and it's easy to see why he's been 
granted the starring role in this 
instance. The imagery, both 
visually and vocally, is heavy with 
the war veteran aesthetic much 
favoured by No Limit. Full 
Blooded not only looks like he's 
spent six months in a tiger cage 
in Phnom Penh, but raps like he's 
on his last legs, screaming out for 
the troop carrier to wait one 
more minute. It's as if he's 
rapping against a cacophony of 
helicopters, landmines and AK47 
fire, scrambling to get out before 
they drop the Agent Orange. He 
seems to approach each track 
like it might be his last. All of 
which contrasts dramatically with 
the music which is amongst the 
most languid and soulful I've 
heard from No Limit. There's an 
expertly balanced tension at 
work, particularly during the 
slow bass horrorcore of 'Red 
Rum' and 'Countdown', which 
sounds like they've run out of 


bullets and have started firing 
orchestras at each other. 

At worst I expected that if 
Memorial Day did turn out to be 
crap, appearances by C-Murder 
and Snoop Dogg might make up 
for the rest, but Private Blooded 
manages to hold centre-stage 
even during walk-on parts by 
such big cheeses as these. As 
Gangsta (or 'reality rap' as some 
folks are now calling it) goes, this 
is about as grizzled and dirty and 
just plain old ugly as it gets, so I 
don't think Full Blooded is likely 
to be guesting on any Mariah 
Carey releases in the foreseeable 
future. When even the relatively 
obscure albums are of this quality 
there's little to suggest that No 
Limit have finished the live 
ammo. Full Blooded might not be 
a huge seller, so far as I can tell 
from this side of the Atlantic, but 
then sales aren't everything and 
you've got to be impressed by a 
man who could make a bus 
timetable sound like a battle cry. 

May contain sexual swearwords. 


MC Eiht 

Section 8 

USA, HOO BANGIN' 
RECORDS P2 50021 CD 
(1999) 

There's nothing I appreciate 
more than a rapper with a 
distinctive noise. There's Master 
P saying 'uuuuuugh' whenever 
occasion demands. Fiend has his 
'wooooo!' Mystikal has 'aaaaagh!' 
Mack 1 0 finds 'west-siii-eeeed' 
suits his purposes best. Missy 
Elliot makes high-pitched 
teleprinted sounds. Perhaps the 
king of these noises is MC Eiht's 
'geauh', pronounced 'jee-uh'. But 
what does it mean? 'Hello boys 
and girls, I'm MC Eiht and I'm 
pleased to make your 
acquaintance' perhaps? Anyway, 
he sure says it a lot. If you skip 


through this CD, you get a 
whose passel of consecutive 
'geauhs'. Which is cool with me. 

MC Eiht (pronounced 'eight') was 
in Compton's Most Wanted and 
has done shitloads of albums. 

This is the latest. The last two 
weren't up to much as he's 
admitted himself. He was trying 
to get out of a shitty contract, 
and was getting some shitty 
treatment from the record 
company, so decided a couple of 
shitty albums were all they 
deserved. Before this he'd made 
a name acting in the film Menace 
// Society, and by having an album 
stay at number one for five 
weeks, which at the time was 
unusual for a hip hop artist. So 
even though he hasn't been 
away, Section 8 could almost be 
called a comeback. 

He's now signed with Mack 1 0's 
Hoo Bangin' label, thus keeping it 
West Coast, and produced a set 
which is as solid as I'd hoped it 
would be. He's been giving it the 
old verbals since at least 1 987, 
and you don't last that long 


without having something going 
for you. Geauh. 

You'd be forgiven for thinking 
that New York is where hip hop 
lives. Los Angeles has definitely 
lost out in recent times, which 
seems a bit mad as the quality 
and quantity of West Coast rap is 
as strong as ever. What is more, 
none of the LA chaps have made 
it big by sounding like someone 
else. New York seems to have 
produced a whole legion of Nas 
soundalikes lately, and the 
presence of a few genuinely 
original talents like Terror Squad 
and Jay-Z only serves to 
emphasise how generic the rest 
of them are. Back on the best 
coast, as they say, Mack 10, Ras 
Kass, Xzibit, Techniec, and MC 
Eiht may not have the sonic 
gymnastics of yer Bustas and yer 



117 


2000 

Twistas, but you could never 
mistake one for the other. 

Eiht's tales, told with skill and 
humour, are still very much of 
the kind you'd expect. It's street 
level stuff, which may sound a 
cliche, but it's not just the story, 
it's the way it's told, and Eiht is a 
master of his art. If you were 
expecting tales not of the hood, 
but of topographic oceans or 
whatever, then you'd have to be 
a bit bonkers to expect them 
from wor kidda here. The slow 
funky music has got 'West Coast' 
written Blackpool rock style 
through the centre of every 
single note. It's lush without 
going over the top, and even the 
nervier numbers like 'III Tha 
Hood Way' have an easy-going 
undercurrent, albeit of the 'I'm 
not feeling stressed about the 
bank robbery' kind. Section 8 
may not score points for holding 
any dramatic surprises like a 
Timbaland or Mystikal album. But 
then some rare and exotic foods 
are easily ruined, and pie and 
mash can be fit for a king if 
prepared with the same care and 
attention that MC Eiht has 
supplied here. 

There's an increased tendency 
to fill hip hop albums with little 
between-track skits and unfunny 
gags. The majority of these 
'funnies' are there just to fill 
space and get the label's money's 
worth out of the CD pressing 
plant. Here we get 'Tha Nail 
Shop (Luther's Outro)' courtesy 
of er...the MC Eiht Dickswingers, 
if you please. It still makes me 
laugh after repeated plays. When 
even the bits that you usually 
leave on the side of the plate are 
good, it's an indication that MC 
Eight isn't making albums just 
because he can. Geauh. 

Dr Dre 

The Chronic 2001 

USA, AFTERMATH 
ENTERTAINMENT / 
INTERSCOPE RECORDS 
490 486-2 CD (1999) 

I can see this is going to be 
another incarnation of that same 
review I keep writing which goes 
'everybody thinks this is bad and 
(insert name) is a spent 
force.. .but I think (insert name) is 
good and this is a tour de force!' 
Oh well. Let's go... 

A friend, whom I shall call Paul, 
who is an enthusiastic fan of 
techno and dance music, recently 
turned up on my doorstep. 'I am 
busting for a shit, ' he explained, 
'so I will need to avail myself of 
your lavatory or else I fear I shall 
soil my trousers presently.' I of 
course invited Paul in and warned 



The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 



him that I was entirely bereft of 
any bottom-wiping material but 
for a copy of dance-zombie 
organ Mixmag. Paul sniffily 
informed me that he'd rather 
take his chances than insult his 
bum with such material, and so, 
accordingly turned and retraced 
his footsteps down my garden 
path, filling his trousers to 
capacity just as he reached the 
gate. Wondering at such a 
decision, I took my first glance at 
the Mixmag which had somehow 
come into my possession. Paul 
was right. It was utter toss. 
There's a review of The Chronic 
2001. They thought it was 
rubbish. Where the hell did these 
pencil-neck Alice Deejay-listening 
know-nothing assholes get 
enough heart to criticise Dr Dre? 
This is the man who's probably 
had a bigger influence on the last 
ten years of hip hop than anyone. 
Even if his latest IS wack, you 
don't just conveniently forget 
what this man's done. Even 
Malady Maker managed to get it 
right, despite their embarrassing 
revelation that Dre's suddenly 
invented a brand of hip hop that 
he's been perfecting for at least 
the last five years. 

Hip hop, more than any other 
genre, seems especially 
unforgiving of the odd lapse. 

Build 'em up and knock 'em 
down seems to apply with capital 
letters in rap circles. Indie types 
will overlook the odd 
disappointing glitch in the career 
of Oasis - like the fact that 
everything they've ever done is 
utter toss. But Master P (for 
example) loses 25 cents in a 
faulty donut vending machine and 
the knives are out. Snoop's 
second album got the treatment 
for the terrible crime of being a 
different record to Doggystyle. 
It's been the same with Dr Dre, 
forever having to live up to the 
expectation that one day he's 
going to remake the album that 
put him up there in the first 
place. 

Anyway, despite the weight 
carried by unfavourable reviews 
in Mixmag and The Wire, there's 
no problem. He's done it again, 
AND without simply restating 
past glories. The Chronic 200 1, 
so named because of Death 
Row's insulting un-Dre related 
compilation The Chronic 2000, is 
a perfection of the hip hop 
Addams Family theme music the 
good doctor's been messing 
around with for some time. It's a 
distinctive sound - spaghetti 
western hip hop perhaps - which 
might be hard to place if you 
took away the vocals. Obviously 
there'd be no point in wheeling 
out the g-funk once again. Just 
about everyone else is doing a 
variation on that anyway. The 
current Dre sound hasn't always 


worked this well. His 
contributions to The Firm album 
somehow never quite gelled as 
they should, leaving Foxy Brown 
and Canibus carrying the mantle. 
He's thickened out the sound, 
filed off a few of the harsher 
edges, and got rid of the 
clunkiness. The new model is not 
only roadworthy but if this album 
was a car, which was a woman, it 
would etcetera etcetera. The 
cast of thousands invited to drop 
some verbals looked a bit scary 
on the sleeve, but the disc just 
glides effortlessly through the 22 
tracks in a time that has you 
wishing he'd pulled out the stops 
and made it a double. Eminem 
(surprise!), Kurupt, Xzibit, King T 
and other notables are here. For 
sheer vicarious thrills, it really is 
great to hear Snoop Dogg and 
MC Ren - despite the modesty of 
his contribution - back with the 
doc once again. There's a potent 
chemistry going on, and 
everyone seems to be bringing 
the best out of each other, not 
least the man himself whose raps 
from the perspective of someone 
who's older, wiser, and a family 
man, represent a voice that's 
heard all too rarely in hip hop. 

Of course there's still a certain 
degree of criminal or otherwise 
fruity activity being described, 
but with the same originality, 
humour and eloquence you 
should expect from Dre. 

The term rap veteran, thanks to 
dodgy record contracts and the 
tooth-and-daw politics that 
always seem to apply when 
anyone dares to follow up a killer 
debut, is almost as strong an 
oxymoron as 'military 
intelligence' and 'Channel 5 
News'. Nevertheless, Dr Dre is 
rapidly becoming a pillar of this 
tiny elite, who have achieved 
longevity by virtue of persistence 
and refusal to keep making the 
same album over and over. One 
day, he'll be as highly regarded as 


Muddy Waters or BB King, and I 
expect he'll still be dropping fine 
albums right up until the end. 

The man is an originator, and it 
doesn't sound like he's going to 
be running out of gas anytime 
soon. 

The 57th Dynasty 

Spoken Word 

FAS FWD 

ENTERTAINMENTS FF06 CD 
(1999) 

More UK hip hop, which I'm just 
waiting for some tosspot to label 
'Brit Hop'. I'd have to be doubly 
ashamed if I missed out on this 
lot, seeing as they live just down 
the road. They 're part of a 
collective thing which 
incorporates DJs, MCs, 
producers and at least a few 
groups who split off into solo 
acts when the need arises. 

There's a wide range of talents 
involved - Spoken Word is 
largely hip hop, but there's a 
strong ragga element. 

Musically there's a lot that fills 
the gap between Terror Squad 
and Wu-Tang. Which can't be 
bad, particularly as it doesn't 
borrow at the expense of having 
its own strong identity - even if 
one of the main men is rapping 
with a Stateside twang. Before 
anyone's nose starts moving in an 
upwards direction, the laddie in 
question - Paradise - lived in the 
Bronx for 1 8 years, so is entitled 
to sound American. Would you 
expect him to do a Dick Van 
Dyke? 'I say thee nay', as The 
Mighty Thor would put it. Talking 
of the blokes with the vocals, of 
which this lot have no shortage, 
it's all good, well-told, powerful 
stuff. It's a great improvement on 
the majority of half-arsed stuff 
coming from New York at 
present. The excellently named 


Lil Monsta gets a special mention 
for finer wordplay than a 14 
year-old surely has the right to 
be capable of. With such a 
formidable cakehole, I doubt that 
a job in MacDonalds is something 
he'll need to worry about. 

Charlie Parker's production is 
flawless throughout. Lyrically, 
nobody is coming out with a load 
of words just for want of 
something better to do, and as a 
result there's a good few hot 
potatoes on offer. 'Pattern 57' is 
the Elgar symphony that's just 
spilt your pint but you still know 
not to fuck with. 'Words, Power 
and Sound' keeps yer arse 
moving and yer head ringing. It's 
about the first ragga-dancehall 
thing that I've truly connected 
with. Soppy although it may 
sound, I've found the weird 
steam hammer offbeats a bit 
inscrutable up until now, but 
suddenly it all makes sense. 

Maybe these boys just do it 
better than anyone else. 

Darkus Howe presented a TV 
series recently asking where 
English culture is to be found. He 
had to dig up some seriously 
twisted and ugly specimens in the 
course of this investigation. 
Contrary to what inbred Oldham 
mutants and the Outrageds of 
Dover might like to believe, 
English culture as a flag-waving 
pie-scoffing arsehole is on its last 
legs. Real English culture (if there 
is such a thing) is more likely to 
be found amongst the people 
who are bothering to make it, 
instead of just recycling the past, 
Oasis-style. The 57th Dynasty 
are the real thing, and will 
probably have to wait a long time 
before Tony Blair invites them 
round for tea and buns. Come on 
kids, show your support for Fas 
Fwd and treat your CD player. 

www. fas fwd com 


The Notorious 
B.I.G. 

Born Again 

USA, BAD BOY 
78612-73023-2 CD (1999) 

Unlike Tupac, who shuffled off 
this mortal coil leaving 
Muslimgauze quantities of 
unreleased material behind, 
Biggie departed for the celestial 
donut stand with pretty much 
everything he'd done readily 
available. Before his tragic 
demise, just as Life After Death 
was finished, there were 
rumblings about his next album, 
which never existed in any form 
more substantial than an idea for 
the title - Born Again. Puffy has 


118 



The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


scraped together just enough 
miscellaneous outtakes, demos 
and suchlike to frankenstein 
Biggie's last album into existence. 
Is this a good thing? 
Hmmm...tricky. 

Although it's been said that the 
new tracks aren't the sort of 
thing Mr Wallace would've 
rapped over, musically it's okay. 
None of it stinks.. .too much. 

With Biggie's distinctive voice 
flowing like dark asthmatic 
chocolate, and his lyrical 
inventiveness, you know it's got 
to have something going for it. 
Leaving aside the dubious 
morality of posthumous albums, 
as opposed to those which 
simply didn't get released in the 
artist's lifetime, what's the 
problem? 

For a start the amount of actual 
Biggie material is dwarfed by that 
of the numerous guest stars, 
presumably recruited to pay 
tribute to the late genius, but also 
to pad Born Again out 

to album length. Everybody is on 
here. Stick a pin into a page of 
the phone book and it'll pick out 
the name of someone on this 
CD. Some I'm always glad to 
come across - Eminem, Snoop, 
Missy, Hot Boy$ - but onions do 
not a hot dog make. At worst 
Biggie himself is a posthumous 
guest star on some numbers, and 
while they're always of some 
interest, few of his raps are as 
distinctive as those which came 
out in his lifetime. 

There's something I find a bit 
uncomfortable about the whole 
thing. The only track I'd praise 
without reservation is 'If I Should 
Die Before I Wake', which has a 
truly chilling slice of industrial 
printing machine hip hop as 
backing, and a tension-filled rap 
from Ice Cube. The six-sided 
frozen one stands out by virtue 
of sheer dramatic impact, and 
he's one of the few whose 


contribution acknowledges the 
passing of the main act. Many of 
these helping throats are 
pretending they've turned up on 
something B.I.G. would've done if 
he were still here. The most 
poignant piece is the spoken 
outro by Biggie's mum, which 
vividly brings home the full 
tragedy of her son's passing, but 
after a few minutes she's faded 
out - like her appearance is an 
afterthought. She paints a picture 
of Biggie as a sweet likeable kid 
who loved rap, not least because 
the success it brought him meant 
he could afford to be generous 
towards his loved ones, friends 
and family. Voletta Wallace's 
spoken piece is the most 
important track on the album 
and she deserves better than the 
status of an usherette who shows 
you to the exit once the film's 
over. Particularly when the main 
feature showcases such utter 
crap as Junior M.A.F.I.A.'s 'Biggie'. 

This isn't a completely terrible 
album, although it does have big 
problems. It has its moments, but 
the bottom line is that it claims 
to be a Biggie album, and it 
doesn't have a hope of comparing 
well with Beady To Die - one of 
THE rap albums. In comparison 
this can't help but fall flat, and 
perversely it just gets worse with 
each repeated listen. 

Public Enemy 

There's a Poison 
Goin' On... 

USA, PLAY IT AGAIN SAM 
PIASXCD004 CD (1999) 

Excepting moments of superbly 
co-ordinated chaos such as ‘Bring 
The Noise', I have generally felt 
PE, despite lyrical superiority, 
were always a bit too much for 
my taste. I can handle free-form 


noise and feedback happily, but 
with PE the sheer relentlessness 
of their wall of sound, and that 
bloody saxophone squeal looped 
again and again, got a bit 
monotonous. Even Whitehouse 
offset and accentuate their sonic 
assault with quieter passages 
which emphasise the severity of 
the noisy bits. 

Happily, Chuck D has realised 
that you can knock a wall down 
by means other than screaming 
at the top of your voice. This is 
his most listenable record I've 
heard, thanks to the 
jiggery-pokery of new accomplice 
Tom E Hawk. There's still the 
jarring loops, merciless beats, 
incongruous noises riveted onto 
a funky backbone, all square 
pegged into yer proverbial round 
hole, but with a great deal more 
artifice. There's a good sense of 
space and timing, allowing your 
ears breathing room, even on the 
more claustrophobic tracks. 
Blummin' heck - there's even 
tunes you can whistle. Spaghetti 
Western ('Last Mass of the 
Caballeros'), guitar grunge ('Do 
you wanna go our way???') and 
even jazzy film noir (T) are in the 
melting pot, making for a truly 
eclectic album, something which 
from Public Enemy would once 
have seemed as probable as a 
Leonard Cohen laff fest. I'll go 
further and say this disc makes 
the skip button on your CD 
player redundant. It isn't exactly 
PE's attempt to lure the kids 
away from The Backdoor Boys 
(or whatever they're called) - it 
jangles the nerves like their best 
stuff always did, only by different 
and less obvious means. Notably 
on 'Kevorkian' where the rhythm 
loop is just a fraction of a second 
too short for comfort, creating 
the aural equivalent of a heart 
murmur. 

Flavor Flav normally succeeds 
only in screwing up Chuck's 
albums with his token solo 
tracks. 'Gett Off My Back' from 
1 992's Greatest Misses for 
example couldn't have been less 
welcome had it been a straight 
cover of a Russ Abbot song. 
Flavor Flav and his unfeasibly 
large timepiece get two solo 
spots here. 'What What' is pretty 
good, but much to my 
astonishment '4 1 : 1 9' is as fine as 
anything else on the record. 

My only real misgivings were to 
do with the lyrical content. 

Chuck devotes more of his 
superbly crafted lines to 
sideswipes at other rappers than 
is necessary. None of it's overtly 
said but Foxy Brown, Snoop 
Dogg, Wu-Tang Clan and Master 
P are all alluded to. I guess 
Chuck's a bit fed up of the guns, 
drugs and money thing. Fair 
enough, but even so a bit trivial 


for one with such an evidently 
astute view of the bigger picture. 
One line likens the way hip hop 
is sold by big white-owned 
corporations to a slave 
plantation, with rappers 'picking 
electronic cotton' for the boss 
man. Okay, no doubt a shitty 
record deal is a bad thing, but 
this analogy is a bit extreme, and 
surely insulting to the memory of 
the millions who lived and died in 
slavery. This point made, I 
recently read Chuck's excellent 
and even essential autobiography 
Fight The Power, which makes it 
clear that he only comes out 
with such melodramatic 
statements because he cares so 
much. 

I once considered PE to be 
worthy, but overrated. On the 
strength of this CD, not to 
mention Chuck's illuminating 
autobio, I admit I've been an 
uninformed prannet. Boy, is my 
face red! The world needs more 
folks who care as much as 
Chuck, and anyone who ever 
doubted PE need to hear this 
record. 

Also released on the web: 
www.atomicpop.com or 
www.publicenemy. com 

### 

Hoy Boy$ 

Guerrilla Warfare 

USA, CASH MONEY 
RECORDS UD 53264 CD 
(1999) 

The hip hop diss track has a long 
and confusing history. Sometimes 
things can get out of hand and it 
all ends in tears or death, but 
you've got to be aware that 
there's probably more going on 
than just a few rappers slagging 
each other off on wax. There are 
no clear cut laws of cause and 
effect. One of my favourite diss 
numbers is Westside 
Connection's 'King Of The Hill', 
on which Ice Cube, Mack 10 and 
WC express their reservations 
about Cypress Hill in terms that 
leave little room for ambiguity. It 
leaves your stereo begging for 
mercy, smoke pouring from the 
speakers. What did Cypress do 
to deserve such unrelenting fury? 
Whatever the case, it's a fucking 
amazing track despite the 
dubious morality. And in spite of 
his assertion that 'niggas down 
with Cypress can wipe the shit 
off my dick', Ice Cube named 
their debut album as an all-time 
favourite, and is currently 
starring in Thicker Than Water, a 
film produced by Mack 10 of 
Westside Connection and 
featuring a cameo by B-Real from 
The Hill. Talking of Ice Cube, he 










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119 



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AHEAD OF MOST EAST COAST 

rappers. h/s debut album, 

'CAPITAL. PUNISHMENT' IS A 

STON& cold classic .the Gi>y 
had A Lcrr of fersonaltt 



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ALBUM T ALSO FEATURING PUN 
IS LIKEWISE AM ESSENTIAL PISE. 


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I SUPPOSE tr SHOULDMT COME flS A BIG 
SURPRISE. AFPAReNTLy PUN HAD TAKEN ID 
WOeiCIMC. OUT SOMETIME LAST tsar | 

HIS DOCTOR MUSTWE TOLD HIM TO LOSE A FEW 
of those swfle Trees. 1 


IT STILL SEEMS HARD TO 0ELI61/E H£'S GONE. CHRISTOPHER RIOS AKA g|S PUWISH6R , XX) 


50MEWH&2E [N HEAVEN, ON A REINFORCED 

cloup pun's there, hanging* out with 

BIGGIE flMDZWC AND GFZT, PPOBABIJ HAYING 
A GREAT TIME PULLING TRAINS ON LADT AnSES. 


WERE AOJATS ONE OF THE GIANTS. WERE 
GOING TO MISS WU 










The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 



seems to be pals again with other 
ex-NWA members, despite their 
threat to cut off his head and 
fuck him with a broom on Niggaz 
4 Life. 

Dissing is hard to approve of, but 
it is sometimes entertaining. On 
the other hand, there's a record 
out by some bunch of 
nonentities, advertised purely on 
the strength that it takes a pop at 
Three 6 Mafia. Master P has 
never held his tongue in pointing 
out that slagging off other groups 
just to sell records is a bit sad. 
Although he's done a few diss 
records himself, they've never 
been specific. Names are 
withheld, and he makes sure it 
could be anyone's guess who's 
pissed him off this time. If he's 
party to any fires at least he's not 
fanning the flames, and 
sometimes he's there with the 
hose of reason - if you'll pardon 
such a weird metaphor. 

Cash Money were around before 
No Limit, and were overtaken 
when that label blew up big time. 
There's probably a bit of 
resentment with some thinking 
No Limit is the only New 
Orleans hip hop label. 
Furthermore, a forthcoming No 
Limit film was to be called Hoc 
Boys, which (P testily explains) is 
just New Orleans slang and he 
isn't trying to step on anyone's 
toes. Cash Money's prime 
movers aren't quite doing a 
Westside Connection, but they 
still can't help explaining that 
'everyone knows who the real 
Hot Boy$ are and it ain't these 
fake wannabe soldiers'. Fair play I 
suppose, but they sound strong 
enough as it is. They don't need 
the frequent references to that 
OTHER New Orleans label. 

Guerrilla Warfare is produced by 
Mannie Fresh, another talented 
exponent of the New Orleans 
sound - skittery beats, squelching 
bass and frenetic electronic 
hiccups. It's a harder, more 
upfront and digital sound than 
that of Beats By The Pound. For 
my taste it lacks No Limit's 
deeper subtleties, but 
compensates with its razor-edge 
immediacy. The lads themselves, 
B.G., Young Turk, Juvenile and Lil 
Wayne do a Stirling job, intoning 
their lyrically tight raps into the 
listener's earholes. Although 
quite similar, their voices are 
clearly differentiated by pitch, 
with Juvenile holding down the 
Daddy Bear end and Lil Wayne 
buzzing about overhead like 
some pissed-off, gang-banging 
mosquito. If a cat could purr 
angrily, four of them would 
sound like this. Imagine Top Cat 
minus Officer Dibble, with guns. 

This album's had a lot of praise, 
most of it justified. While there's 
nothing that lets the side down. 


there are fewer highs than on 
er...sorry...certain releases by 
that OTHER New Orleans 
bunch. This could be down to my 
own personal taste. ‘Get Out Of 
Tha Way' and 'Clear Tha Set' 
stand out as works far greater 
than the sum of their relentlessly 
programmed parts, the former 
rolling along like some 
unstoppable butcher robot from 
an early Judge Dredd strip, knives 
whirring and slicing up everything 
in its path. 'You Dig' is the finest 
number here by a long shot, and 
could be called Stadium hop hop. 
You can almost see the lighters 
waved aloft. Ten years ago, 
Laibach would've done an ironic 
cover of this track. 

Hot Boy$ definitely deserve the 
attention they've been getting. 
They're pretty young so they're 
probably going to get better and 
better. Hopefully the beef will be 
resolved. New Orleans has two 
excellent labels and more than its 
fair share of microphone talent, 
so it's be nice if they could show 
a bit of solidarity. 


Terror Squad 

The Album 

USA, ATLANTIC 83232-2 CD 
(1999) 

Any students of human biology 
requiring something truly 
esoteric to justify a research 
grant might do worse than look 
into correlations between the 
generously-proportioned and 
above-average rapping skill. 
Despite a few exceptions, a 
definite pattern is emerging. 
Notorious B.I.G. was no stranger 
to second helpings, and his legacy 
speaks for itself. Mia X, now 
involved in some legal dispute 
involving an ex-associate 
demanding recompense for all 
that fried chicken, is no verbal 
slouch either. Ice Cube, while 
not enormous, still retains a 
certain amount of puppy fat, and 
who can doubt that he has 
rhymed like a demon when 
occasion demanded. Terror 
Squad contains not one, but two 
large and phenomenally talented 
lyricists: Fat Joe - who makes 
Cyril Smith look like Nick Cave, 


and Big Pun - who makes Fat Joe 
look like Nick Cave. Cuban Link 
is no tiddler, either. If my theory 
holds true, then Terror Squad 
should be unstoppable by virtue 
of their quotient of larger 
gentlemen. Sure enough, this 
debut album is a smoking gun if 
ever there was one. 

Terror Squad are a six-piece 
Hispanic crew from the Bronx. 
Joe and Pun are already well 
established by virtue of blinding 
solo albums - which, with a 
seemingly effortless and flowing 
ability to weave compelling 
stories, rudely differentiates them 
from the faceless legions of 
whiney New Yorkers. With two 
major talents in house, it's 
impressive they've found four 
accomplices - Cuban Link, Triple 
Seis, Armageddon and Prospect - 
who not only hold their own, but 
succeed with stakes so high. 

It should be stressed that TS 
aren't part of this Latino thing 
that's apparently going on - as Fat 
Joe has said, even though his 
uncle is a doctor he doesn't 
specialise in Spanish medicine. 
There may be a few Latino 
elements, but no more so than 
on many current hip hop albums. 
Lyrical brilliance aside, it doesn't 
hurt that the music is so damn 
trouser-soilingly fine. There's a 
certain Wu-Tang rawness, but 
without the haphazard quality 
which tips that group's music into 
directionless chaos. The 
production is better, sounding 
lavish and orchestrated without 
sacrificing its hard-edged energy. 
Imagine the RZA producing a 
Burt Bacharach score to 
Goodfel/as. 

I've seen a few mediocre reviews 
of this album, which prompts the 
old 'were they listening to the 
same album' question beloved of 
Melody Maker readers. I've tried, 
but I can't find a single dud, just 
1 6 absolute horrorcore belters. 
Most notable are the Buju 
Banton collaboration 'Rudeboy 
Salute', so weird that it works - 
and Triple Seis' solo track 'War', 
which beggars description. It's 
one of those once in a lifetime, 
all bets are off, numbers. I've 
never visited the Bronx but 
listening to Terror Squad, I think 
I even know what the place 
SMELLS like. This set really sticks 
it in, and breaks it off. It just HAS 
to be the finest debut in a good 
few years. Pun and Joe might 
shop at clothing stores for the 
larger gent, but there isn't an 
ounce of flab on this disc. 

Epitaph for Big 
Pun 

Since writing the above it has 
been announced that Big Pun 



121 



The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


died of a heart attack on the 7th 
of February. That he passed away 
from causes which were medical 
rather than, as is more common, 
gang related, is of little comfort. 
Again, we've lost one of the good 
guys. Anyone familiar with the 
above album, or his solo debut 
Capital Punishment, or his 
numerous appearances 
elsewhere, will know that he was 
never just another Bronx rapper. 
Few have achieved such levels of 
widespread respect or shown 
such original lyrical genius so 
early on in their career. As of the 
time of writing, I'm still finding it 
hard to accept that he's gone. He 
was one of the greats. He will be 
missed. 

Puff Daddy 

Forever 

USA, BAD BOY 
78612-73033-2 CD (1999) 

Puffy's come in for a lot of 
criticism , from sources who 
aren't perhaps overqualified for 
the task. The legend runs that 
Puffy can't dance, write, play an 
instrument, or rap. Some of this 
is true, as Puffy has freely 
admitted. His talent, which is 
sometimes overlooked, is in 
production - in knowing which 
elements to bring together to 
make a whole. He excels so well 
in this field as to compensate for 
other shortcomings. There was 
that Police sample of course, 
when many people seemed to 
forget that hip hop started off by 
nicking bits of other people's 
tunes. With 'I’ll Be Missing You', 
he produced a record I love, out 
of one that I wouldn't wipe my 
arse with - which must indicate 
something special. Even if he 
can't rap, he’s certainly pulled the 
wool over my eyes - he's more 
interesting to listen to than many 
rappers whose credentials never 
come into question. Over this 
and the previous album there's 
only one moment where he falls 
on his arse, verbally. On 'Can't 
Nobody Hold Me Down', he's 
busily borrowing Flash's 'The 
Message', but when it comes to 
the punctuating 'hu-hu hu hu', he 
fails to make the jump - and he's 
suddenly back in the teenager's 
bedroom, trying not to anger Puff 
Mommy with loud recording 
sessions. That's the only instance. 

As a producer he may not be as 
groundbreaking as Timbaland or 
Dr Dre, but he can make a drum 
machine on its own sound as 
lavish as Roxy Music at their 
most cocktail-swiggingly 
luxuriant. 'Underproduced' or 
'half-finished' are descriptions 
you'll never apply to this boy's 
work. The best tracks here - 'I 


Hear Voices', 'Gangsta Shit', 

'Pain', 'Reverse', 'Best Friend', 
'What You Want' and 'I'll Do 
This For You' might tote the 
occasional firearm, but still sound 
like they're casually propped up 
against the concert grand, tie 
undone, with dancing fountains in 
the background - and yes, I AM 
saying that's a good thing. The 
pick of the bunch are 'PE 2000' - 
which Chuck D allowed his 
diametric opposite to borrow in 
the name of irony - and the 
token Notorious B.I.G. number, 
which shits over most of Born 
Again. But - with such a rich 
production sound, there's a fine 
balance between being lavish and 
turning into Barry Manilow. 
Perhaps aware of this. Puffy goes 
in the other direction and goes 
all fancy-pants avant-garde on us. 
Well, sort of. The tracks in 
question are musically 
adventurous, but ultimately a bit 
forgettable. Maybe it isn't really 
his field, maybe the ideas get lost 
in a production that isn't suited. 

'Is This The End' sounds like he's 
trying to do Timbaland, but it just 
doesn't work. He wants to watch 
this gangsta stuff, because it's not 
a subject he does convincingly. If 
your hot dogs are good, leave 
the kebabs to someone else. 

It isn't all great, and doesn't stand 
up to No Way Out, but if you 
liked that album there's more 
than enough here to justify 
buying this one. The main 
problem, symptomised by Puffy's 
increasingly eccentric behaviour 
and this slightly schizophrenic 
album, is that the loss of Biggie 
left him a little ungrounded. The 
demise of such a close friend 
must be more traumatic than 
might seem apparent, even at the 
time. Hopefully he'll get himself 
sorted, because, when on top 
form he can be forgiven for being 
Donald Trump's mate. It seems 
rare that someone so stinking 
rich has their heart in the right 
place, which he undoubtedly 
does. 

Tru 

Da Crime Family 

USA. NO LIMIT V2 47558 2 X 
CD (1999) 

For those of you who weren't 
paying attention last issue, Tru 
are the three Miller brothers, 
Master P, C-Murder, and Silkk 
The Shocker, joined by a guest 
list longer than your arm 
including (in addition to the No 
Limit regulars) Full Blooded, 

DIG, and Ghetto Commission. It 
starts off in fine form with a sort 
of Elgar-in-a-good-mood fanfare, 
over which P explains that you're 
alone in thinking the tank has lost 
its fire, and your friends, mom, 


dad, uncles, aunties, 
grandparents, brothers and sister 
- with whom he enjoyed sexual 
congress only the other day - will 
concur with him. 

My only misgiving is that there's a 
bit too much of what follows. 
Two discs, although they aren't 
full length, so the whole set 


clocks in at just over an hour and 
a half. There isn't so much 
variety as I've come to expect 
from No Limit releases, and 
many tracks do the 'ballin' soul' 
thing that Master P perfected on 
earlier scorchers such as 
'Bourbons and Lacs' and 'Smokin' 
Green'. This is fine, but makes 
the collection sound 
one-dimensional in comparison 
to Master P's Ghetto D, for 
example, which spans musical 
divides with the enthusiasm of an 
eight-armed clown in a pie fight 
There's a couple of numbers 
which, I feel certain, could have 
benefited from some additional 
tweaking in the final mix, just to 
bring out all the stuff going on in 
the background a bit more. 

Such ruminations perhaps explain 
the unfavourable notices that 
have been made against the label. 
There's a good few choice cuts 
here: the horror film electronica 
of 'Hoody Hoo’; the dirty 
grinding beats of 'Dangerous In 
My City'; the sample-scatterburst 
of 'Miller Boys'; the brooding 
downtempo menace of 'Hard 
N's'; and the killer synth-pop if 'I 
Don't Want You No More', with 
its irresistible burping 303 bass 
accompanying Silkk sounding 
every inch the teen heart-throb 
he's renowned to have become. 
I've previously remained 
undecided about Silkk The 
Shocker's microphone technique. 
On a bad day he might be a 
Tourette's sufferer having an 
argument with himself while, by 
pure coincidence, hip hop music 
is going on somewhere else at 


the same time. However, on Da 
Crime Family , he really takes 
flight. His favoured method of 
cramming syllables around 
lengthy mid-sentence pauses, 
while inventive, sometimes falls 
on its arse. But not today. Silkk, 
my little son, now I understand 
what you're trying to do. 


Da Crime Family could've been 
a killer single album, but has 
ended up a reasonable double 
with some high points. Although 
there's a generous helping of 
diamonds, it isn't one of No 
Limits most heavily encrusted. 
Even so it still dumps over most 
of the competition. This is after 
all a No Limit release, and there’ll 
be a heatwave on Pluto before 
the tank fires blanks. 


The High & 
Mighty 

Home Field 
Advantage 

USA, RAWKUS P2 50121 CD 
(1999) 

As some pundits predicted, the 
phenomenal popularity of 
Eminem has inadvertently given 
rise to a whole wave of watery 
white rappers trying to pass off 
their pasty pop as the real stuff. 
There was the truly morbid Bran 
Van 2000, who dared to pinch 
lines from Snoop for their weedy 
booze advert soundtrack. There's 
Len who ride high in the pop 
parade with the sonic equivalent 
of Jamie 'Tank Girl' Hewlett's 
terminally cutesie comic strips. 
Worse still were 1 ,000 Clowns 
featuring a man with the most 
punchable face I've seen in a long 
time, bleating 'I know I'm not the 
greatest rapper in the world', 

Got that one right, pal! Bah. 
These opportunist butt-monkeys 
should be left in a locked room 
with the mighty Mystikal. A few 
lines from the Tasmanian Devil of 



122 


The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


New Orleans hip hop and It'd be 
just like one those films of trees 
caught in a nuclear blast, leaves 
and bark stripped away in a 
fraction of a second. 

Mr Eon and Mighty Mi are two 
more white guys in the game, but 
thankfully this pair, collectively 
The High & Mighty, are the real 
thing. Rawkus is accruing quite a 
bit of attention for albums by 
Pharaohe Monch and Mos Def, 
so let's hope Home Field 
Advantage doesn’t get 
overlooked amid all the 
excitement. The cover photo of 
a teenager's bedroom festooned 
with basketball souvenirs, 
baseball trading cards, and 
posters of Public Enemy and Eric 
B and Rakim, hints at where 
they're coming from. Is this old 
school? I don't remember old 
school sounding so modern, even 
at the time: elegant chunky 
scratches from Mighty Mi over 
meaty acoustic beats with 
consistently irresistible hooks. 

Mr Eon comes over like your 
friendly Noo Yoik uncle, the Bob 
Dobbs lookalike with the 
high-powered job, ruined by his 
obsession with strip shows and 
all-night porn cinema. It's 
something to do with his 
cheerfully lurid drawl. Is that an 
effluvia-encrusted mac rustling in 
the background? There isn't a 
whole lot of the drugs, gunplay, 
money stuff but - boy - do these 
guys love that top shelf! 'Dick 
Starbuck - Porno Detective' and 
'Hands On Experience' - an ode 
to what we all get up to when 
we're alone and fall victim to the 
horn - are just two stories from 
this big city. It's Prince without 
the expensive hotel rooms, or a 
sober hip hop Bukowski without 
the misery. Although burping the 
worm or digging for clams isn’t 
the only topic of debate, even 
when Mr Eon manages to get 
onto some other subject, that 
loveable hairy-palmed imp just 
can't help himself: 'While on this 
mic I be a pleasant surprise, like 
seeing shaven pussy right in front 
of your eyes.' Brother, you is 
speaking my language. 

Naughty rotten rhymer Eminem 
has been turning up on 
everything . Rumour has it that 
there's a polka band in 
Scandinavia whose new CD 
doesn't feature a guest 
appearance by he whom men call 
Slim Shady, although Busta 
Rhymes is reputed to have been 
involved. Personally I think it's 
great that he's become so 
ubiquitous. Wacky genius of this 
calibre doesn't always achieve 
recognition in its own time. He's 
here on 'The Last Hit' offering 'if 
I don't got two balls and a middle 
finger to throw up, I'm taking off 
both shoes and sticking each 
middle toe up'. Eminem plays 


Daffy Duck with firearms to Mr 
Eon's 1 8 certificate Homer 
Simpson. On the subject of 
guests, for your buck you also 
get Mos Def, Pharaohe Monch, 
Mad Skillz and that other 
celebrated porn enthusiast Kool 
Keith imparting more of his 'I am 
an alien' japery. 

Home Field Advantage bounces 
along on bassy beats and lurid 
detail like an early Disney 
cartoon redrafted by graf artists 
and the editorial staff of Reader's 
Wives. Imagine 'Steam Boat 
Willie' with the emphasis on the 
last part of the title. Listening to 
it on a Walkman whilst pounding 
the streets in my day job, I just 
about stopped myself throwing 
hand shapes and loosening the 


beit for embaggied trousers, but 
it was impossible to keep a silly 
grin away from my face. Picture 
me asking bewildered pensioners 
to sign dockets while in the 
headphones Mr Eon bares his 
soul with 'Channel 35 receiver, 
dick reliever, spank to the 
thought of me shaving beavers'. 
Damn, this is funky, and in more 
than just the musical sense of the 
word. It smells, but it smells 
good. If you know what I'm 
saying. Hubba-Hubba! Go, baby, 
go! 

Various Artists 

Wu-Chronicles 

USA, WU-TANG RECORDS 
P2 51143 CD (1999) 

Not really a proper Clan album 
as such, although most of the 
group's core players are here, 
but a compilation of bits from 
other people's records. Method 
Man's collaboration with 
Notorious B.I.G. is loaned from 
the late lamented portly one's 
first album. Also we get the 
RZA's appearance on the Ras 


Kass CD and Raekwon's guest 
spot with Cocoa Brovaz. You'd 
probably have to be a bit more 
hardcore than I am (which isn't 
particularly hardcore) to have all 
of these tracks already, 
particularly as two of the sixteen 
are previously unreleased. 

It took me a while to grow 
accustomed to the Wu-Tang 
Clan. Initially they sounded a bit 
too half-assed, with noises and 
lines dropping in and out of the 
muddy mix seemingly at random, 
while unremarkable geezers 
rapped vaguely in the same room 
- even in time with the beats on 
odd occasions. Now I see the 
error of my ways. It is this raw 
and dirty-edged quality that is 
their strength, and the individual 


members deliver some fine and 
unique performances, once you 
make the effort to listen. The 
best Wu-Tang tracks lurch 
drunkenly along on a relentless 
RZA beat with the kinetic energy 
of a motorway pile-up. You can 
almost smell gasoline and oil 
clogging up the CD player as 
each track staggers towards you, 
arguing with itself, dropping a 
bottle of malt gutrot, smashing 
on the pavement. RZA's 
production makes Steve Albini’s 
sound positively clean-shaven, 
and I'd love to know what he 
gets up to in the studio. It sounds 
like he's using gas-powered SK I 
samplers, but I'll bet it's a good 
deal more complicated than that. 
His grubby ink-stained 
soundtracks hold the same 
textural allure as a grainy 
photograph reproduced on a 
broken photocopier: was that an 
orchestra or the screech of tyres 
on tarmac? 

Inevitably this doesn't top Enter 
the Wu-Tang. , and not all of the 
tracks are great, but it still has 
enough to merit a rummage in 
your wallet. The opening track in 
particular, GZA’s '4th Chamber', 


is prime Wu-Tang, with a 
nails-down-blackboard synth 
screeching over spaghetti 
Western guitar and RZA's 
tenth-generation xerox distorted 
beats. Killarmy's 'Wake Up' does 
the same thing to something 
that's been kidnapped from Barry 
Manilow and taken down under 
the flyover with a bag over its 
head. Drop the vocals from 
Mobb Deep's 'Right Back At You' 
and you'd have a Swans outtake 
from the Greed sessions. Drop 
the vocals from 'Semi-Automatic: 
Full Rap Metal Jacket’ and you'd 
almost have Cabaret Voltaire 
from the days when they were 
still fiddling about with radios. 
And course there's 'The End' 
from Ras Kass' Rassassination - 
an album which you should 
already own, I rather think you'll 
find. 

Nice cover art too, and a friend 
who's into martial arts tells me 
the Chinese characters do mean 
something appropriate, not just 
'fried rice' or 'crispy duck' as I'd 
suspected. With their chaotic 
solo careers, and Ol' Dirty 
Bastard being arrested on a daily 
basis, it's anyone's guess when 
this lot will ever get around to 
doing another Clan album 
proper, but in the meantime this 
fills the gap. 



Company Flow 

Funcrusher Plus 

USA, RAWKUS RWK 1134-2 
CD (1997) 

i was blown away by 'Patriotism' 
on the Soundbombing H 
compilation, not least because of 
the eloquent and unforgiving 
lyrical barrage: 'I'm the ugliest 
version of passed down toxic 
capitalist rabid MC perversion - 
I'm America!' I kept my nostrils 
peeled for more. Litt/e Johnny 
From The Hospitul is a beast of 
epic proportions, but the only 
version I've found is entirely 
instrumental. I'd almost given up 
when providence alerted me to 
the existence of this album, and I 
vividly remember standing in 
HMV, stunned and excited by the 
prospect of a whole CD's worth 
of Company Flow, complete with 
raps. 

Funcrusher Plus had some 
seriously high expectations to 
live up to and although not quite 
getting there straight off, it 
comes through in the end. The 
production is pretty rough. The 
music is hard-edged and minimal. 
Little Johnny, with its many 
discomforting layers, has a rich 
velvet texture, but this is quite a 
different can of invertebrates. 
Mark Stewart strapped to a 



The Sound Projector SE7ENTH issue 2000 


welder's bench for improvised 
surgery by the RZA, if you will. 
Although stark and out of focus 
and not what you'd call easy 
listening, it mutates into 
something compelling with 
repeated plays. That isn't to say 
it's a case of 'if I listen to this long 
enough I'm sure to like it 
eventually', but it's an album 
which can't be spun a few 
times and then filed away. 
Similarly, with the best 
will in the world, even if 
you succeed in 
hammering a 1 2" vinyl 
record into your CD 
player, the chances are 
that the sound quality 
won't be up to much. 

Different format, you see. 

Aside from the unmerry 
melodies, there's a 
phenomenal volume of 
lyrical work which can't 
possibly be digested in 
one or two sittings 
without the aid of a 
genetically engineered 
brain. One line boasts 
'future MCs are sending 
robots back in time as we 
speak to kill my mother 
before I'm born’, and 
listening to the gob 
Olympics going on, this 
may not be just a load of 
words that sound cool. 
Bigjussand El Producto 
(look, NME readers, a 
white rapper...with ginger 
hair!) seem to be two in a 
field of two, in terms of 
their lyrical persuasions. 

To be honest, I still have 
only vague ideas what 
many of these tracks are 
about, beyond a feint 
suspicion that Company 
Flow aren't particularly 
enamoured of big 
corporations, authority, 
or stupidity. I'd guess 
Public Enemy could be an 
influence, at least more 
so than Puff Daddy. I 
mean - 'even when I say 
nothing it's a beautiful use 
of negative space' - what 
a line! Without wishing 
to cast aspersions on 
anyone else, it just isn't 
the sort of thing I've 
become accustomed to 
hearing on a hip-hop 
record. 

Taken as a whole, in spite 
of an occasionally witty 
maxim emerging from the 
sensory overload, it's 
quite a chilling record. 

Even the cheesy pulp film 
dialogue of 'Help 
Wanted' ('My name is 
Lute. My Planet is Pluto. 

My business is 
architecture.') comes 
over like the awful 
portent of some 


totalitarian future. Initially, only 
two tracks stand out as being 
overtly musical: 'Krazy Kings' 
which chugs along nervously until 
a spiralling horn-driven chorus 
pulls the rug out from under you; 
and 'Info Kill IP which is Elgar 
slashing his wrists with a beatbox 
in an outtake from One Flew 
Over The Cuckoo 's Nest 


Massive Attack might as well be 
Steps. These two seem to 
represent the portion of iceberg 
above the surface. Even if the 
true scale of Funcrusher Plus isn't 
apparent at first glance, it still has 
the power to put a crimp in your 
agenda. Buy this album and brace 
yourself. It may not be a 
comfortable ride but you'll get 


used to it, and after a little time 
you'll be glad to have made the 
effort. 



124 




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